artBahrain.org

A select group of paintings from Rashid al Khalifa’s “Reflection” series -- recently on view at the Bahrain Financial Harbour gallery -- are to be exhibited at the prestigious Beirut Art Fair this July 5th through the 8th.

The fair, held at the Beirut International Exhibition and Leisure Center (BIEL), is now in its 3rd year - and is evolving into one of the must-stop destinations on the itineraries of art world professional and collectors.

The Beirut Art Fair is unique as it is the only art fair dedicated entirely to contemporary art from the ME.NA.SA region. This distinction affords visitors to see contemporary art from the Gulf and analyze and appreciate it in a forum designed to give this ever-growing group of internationally acclaimed artists a platform in which to show their work side by side with other artists from the region.

The result of the decision to only show work from the ME.NA.SA region creates a unique scenario in which viewing artistic production made by artists from albeit a wide swath of real estate, creates a dialectic.

Westerners often make the mistake of lumping these countries into a monolithic entity called: “The Middle East”, but the dizzying variety of cultural traditions and geopolitical themes from many of these countries, each idiosyncratic in its own right, allows visitors to see the work as both stand-alone achievement and in the context of what choices artists are making in both disciplines and themes from the Gulf, to Southeast Asia to North Africa.

GROWING ACCLAIM AND DEMAND FOR SHAIKH RASHID’S WORK

Word of mouth throughout the Middle East, and then in art capitals around the world has resulted in a growing familiarity with, and acclaim for Shaikh Rashid’s work. The result has been a growing demand for his paintings to travel globally for exhibitions at prestigious galleries, art fairs, and other venues around the world.

REPRESENTATION BY THE LEILA HELLER GALLERY

In addition, Shaikh Rashid’s career as a painter took another important step this summer, when Leila Heller, doyenne of the Middle Eastern contemporary art world -- with prestigious galleries in New York, agreed to represent Shaikh Rashid.

Ms. Heller, who is Persian, was the first art dealer to show Middle Eastern work in the West. After working at both the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington, DC and The Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan, Heller opened her first gallery in 1982, when contemporary work from the Gulf was largely unknown in Western art circles.

In the ensuing 30 years, Ms. Heller has taken a roster of the highest quality artists and vaulted them into the pantheon of those artists collected by the most discerning clients--and who are now viewed as top “international” artists--rather than just as “regional” Middle Eastern artists.

After seeing Shaikh Rashid’s “Convex” show, which took place last year at the Bahrain National Museum -- a show that chronologically charted his long and fruitful career as a painter -- and then the “Reflection” show at the BFH, Heller stated: “I had heard from many people that Shaikh Rashid was an extremely versatile and talented artist, and now that I have visited the Kingdom of Bahrain several times in order to see his work and its evolution, I am thrilled to be able to work with Shaikh Rashid in getting his aesthetically complex and intriguing work seen by a wider audience and I look forward to a long and rewarding partnership”.