Boat, a monumental 12-metre walk-in installation composed of bamboo, cotton and 8,000 sheets of Xuan (rice) paper created by leading Chinese artist Zhu Jinshi, will be the centerpiece of 28 Chinese at the Rubell Family Collection, opening 4 December 2013 to coincide with Art Basel in Miami Beach. This is the first time Boat has been exhibited in America.

Zhu Jinshi describes Boat as representing ‘a symbolic journey’, as the multiple layers of xuan paper walls gently block out the outside world as each viewer moves through the length of the tunnel. Xuan paper is widely considered to be the first material ever invented specifically for writing and painting; a material steeped in history and tradition.

Zhu was an active participant in underground cultural and literary activities during the Cultural Revolution, first emerging in the late 1970s as a member of the renowned and groundbreaking ‘Stars’ (Xingxing) avant-garde artist group alongside Ai Weiwei and Ma Desheng. Having fled China in the 1980s, Zhu was exposed to German Expressionism in Berlin, while at the same time the speed and spontaneity of his brushwork is influenced by xie yi ink-and-brush paintings.

Alongside Boat Zhu also presents a series of heavily impastoed oil paintings, for which the artist has been recognized internationally. Both Zhu’s sculptural installation and his abstract work express a rigorous dedication to material, and his lifelong commitment to the language of pure abstract form. His large-scale canvases, laden with multicoloured oils, create a dialogue between Western and Chinese abstraction, referencing the work of Wassily Kandinsky and the Western tradition of Abstract Expressionism which emerged from the US in the late 1960’s.

Pearl Lam, Founder of Pearl Lam Galleries said:

Miami River Art Fair is presenting its second edition from Dec. 5 to 8, 2013 at the Miami Convention Center inside the James L. Knight International Center located in the downtown Brickell Financial Area at 400 SE Second Ave. in Miami, FL  33131.  A VIP Collector’s Preview will be held on Dec. 5 from 6 to 11 p.m.

Miami River Art Fair features international contemporary art including a sculpture exhibition on the banks of the Miami River. This year’s event welcomes new participants presenting monumental sculptures from Italy, France, Cuba, Colombia, Korea, Spain and a special presentation from Mexico.

Fair hours are:

Admission is free with online registration and with purchase of an Art Basel Miami Beach or Miami Art Fairs VIP Pass. A complimentary group guided tour is available by online registration. A complimentary shuttle service is available from the James L. Knight Center to and from the Miami Beach Convention Centers and Midtown Miami.

For details, programming and tickets, visit www.miamiriverartfair.com.

Venus Over Manhattan is pleased to announce PISTON HEAD: Artists Engage the Automobile, an exhibition of automobiles transformed into sculptures by leading modern and contemporary artists in the years since 1970. The fourteen works on view will reflect art’s longstanding relationship with the car as a cultural icon and fetish object replete with physical and symbolic possibilities. Opening December 4^th in Miami Beach, Florida, the exhibition will be presented on the top level of 1111 Lincoln Road, the dramatic open-air parking structure designed by Pritzker Prize-winning Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron.

PISTON HEAD will run through December 8^th in conjunction with Art Basel Miami Beach, the annual art fair considered one of the most magnetic events of the international cultural calendar.

PISTON HEAD is powered by Ferrari.

The exhibition includes works by Ron Arad, Bruce High Quality Foundation,César, Dan Colen and Nate Lowman, Keith Haring, Damien Hirst, Virginia Overton, Olivier Mosset/ Jacob Kassay/Servane Mary, Richard Phillips, Richard Prince, Tom Sachs, Salvatore Scarpitta, Kenny Scharf, and Franz West. Additionally, Los Angeles-based artist Joshua Callaghan will create a new work – a signature ‘rubbing’ of Ferrari’s LaFerrari state-of-the-art hybrid supercar, which was unveiled at the 2013 Geneva Auto Show and will be on view with PISTON HEAD in Miami. Callaghan’s performative process, engaging the precious surfaces and sculpted form of the limited-edition vehicle, will be part of the exhibition.

Since 1886, when the Benz-Patent Motorwagen became the first modern motorcar, automobiles have shaped human experience. The quintessential machine of modern life, the car has defined cities, redefined our relationships to the natural world and one another, challenged technology, and fired the imaginations of countless artists in every discipline. Whether via the appeal of its speed to the Italian Futurists, or its mass-produced utility for Pop artists, the automobile has preoccupied artists consistently.

Objects on view in PISTON HEAD are not only about the car in contemporary culture, but are actual cars — fully realized sculptures comprised of vehicles that can roll on four wheels or once did. By removing these works from the white-walled conventions of contemporary galleries and museums, and placing them in the context of a working parking garage, Venus Over Manhattan highlights the way the participating artists have exploited tensions between refinement and brute power, aesthetics and utility.

The artists represented in PISTON HEAD have approached the car as both object and subject in numerous ways. Layered in Bondo, Richard Prince’s American muscle cars are monochromatic, neutral compositions reminiscent of Minimalist painting and sculpture (another brand of American muscle). Conceptual Art and Process Art come to mind when viewing Virginia Overton’s ruggedly elegant Dodge Ram, transformed by a mountain of sand to obscure most of the vehicle’s defining details.

In the painterly vein, Britain’s Damien Hirst offers Spot Mini, a classic, diminutive British automobile covered in the artist’s trademark colorful spots. Similarly, Keith Haring applied his own recognizable imagery to a well-worn Buick, employing his signature calligraphic style to transform the car into a rolling painting. In contrast to these more painterly works, the car of the late Viennese artist Franz West suggests a sculptural approach tinged with wit. West replaced the existing “Spirit of Ecstasy” hood ornament on his 1970 Rolls Royce Silver Shadow with one of his signature Passstuck sculptures. This small gesture transforms West’s personal ride into a commentary on the car as a conveyance of status, identity, and wish fulfillment. Bruce High Quality Foundation’s recently completed work – a pair of entangled Volkswagen Beetles – is a more suggestive take on cars as symbols of what the artists describe as “passion and suffering.”

Brute power has always been the companion of elegance in the world of automobiles and has been frequently addressed in 20th century art history. In a series of works called Compresions des Voitures and created from the 1960s until the artist’s death in 1998, renowned French sculptor César crushed automobiles in order to suggest the collision of classicism and contemporary art. PISTON HEAD will present one of these celebrated works, a “car brick” from among the group César exhibited in the Pavilion of the French Republic at the Venice Biennale of 1995.  César’s work will echo in the contribution of Israeli-born artist and industrial designer Ron Arad, whose own car compression has rendered a six-inch thick ‘canvas.’

Power of another sort – the destructive power of entropy and chaos that result from neglect and mistreatment – will be on view in a contribution from Dan Colen and Nate Lowman. Their collaborative work, created in 2008, is a dilapidated four-door sedan, stuffed with TV sets.  Lucien Smith’s sorrowfully pockmarked and crumbling vehicle once served as the target at a shooting range. With it’s lyric-like title of “The sound of the engine still running and for the last time they locked eyes, together again in the end,” Smith’s work draws chaos away from the merely sad, toward the Romantic. From such glamorous nihilism, PISTON HEAD comes full circle to the joyful, unbridled magic of Kenny Scharf’s painted dinosaur of a family vehicle.

Public, a sector of Art Basel’s Miami Beach show, features over 30 large-scale sculptures and installations by leading and emerging international artists, including Olaf Breuning, Sam Falls, Jeppe Hein, Thomas Houseago, Alicja Kwade, Richard Long, Santiago Roose, Oscar Tuazon, and Ursula von Rydingsvard. For the third straight year the sector is produced in partnership with the Bass Museum of Art. A selection of artworks will continue to be installed in Collins Park through March 2014. The Public sector’s opening night on Wednesday, December 4 will include a special program of performances, free of charge and open to the public.

The theme ‘Social Animals’ has its origins in Aristotle’s observations about the nature of human beings. Set within the cityscape of Miami Beach, this year’s edition of Public  seeks to turn a grouping of separate works by multiple artists into a temporary community  of its own, with works in conversation and in dialog with each other – such as Sam Falls’  powder-coated aluminum installation with a master work by Charlotte Posenenske – as  well as with the location – evident in Michelle Lopez’s towering site-specific structure.
Drawing on his experience of injecting public art within the urban landscape, Nicholas Baume’s selection works to activate the public park as a place for social interactions and as an extension of the diverse exchanges that take place in the environment of the art fair. In this context, Public presents Phil Wagner’s diptych of opposing chairs, large-scale sculptures by Mark di Suvero and Oscar Tuazon, and two urban structures built from concrete, wood, and metal mesh by Santiago Roose. Alicja Kwade’s large-scale steel sculpture reimagines the border lines between time zones as a global electrocardiograph.

The sector’s title likewise links to the hand-worked surfaces and textures of many of the work’s figurative and organic forms. The varied works of Huma Bhabha, Olaf Breuning, Aaron Curry, Tom Friedman, Thomas Houseago, Matthew Monahan, Tony Tasset and Pascale Marthine Tayou incorporate figurative elements, at times alluding to Modernist and ancient totems. The use of natural materials is seen in Carol Bove’s open-form sculpture in petrified wood and steel, Jeppe Hein’s series of ‘rooms’ shaped by water, and Richard Long’s 12-foot-diameter installation in Dartmoor Granite, while Ursula von Rydingsvard’s composition of cut, stacked and sculptured cedar beams transforms solid material into gestural form. Mungo Thomson’s audio recording of professional musicians imitating the sound of crickets is played on outdoor speakers.

Symbols of popular culture are reused and repositioned to engage with the audience, as in Scott Reeder’s three-dimensional installation of the words ‘Real Fake’ and Matias Faldbakken’s adaptation of the original Peterbilt 281 big rig truck which appeared in Steven Spielberg’s first feature film ‘Duel’ (1971). Maarten Vanden Eynde’s composition of oil peak sculptures in bronze is based on the production rates of individual oil wells and the combined production rate of a field of related oil wells.

A selection of works from Public will remain installed in Collins Park for an extended run through March 2014 via tc: temporary contemporary. The city-wide temporary, public art program was initiated by the Bass Museum of Art in partnership with the City of Miami Beach in 2012. It seeks to activate the urban landscape with art and engage with residents, visitors and passers-by to encourage interactions with the city and its communities. tc: temporary contemporary is made possible through the support of The City
of Miami Beach, ArtPlace, National Endowment for the Arts, Knight Foundation and Funding Arts Network, Inc.

David Kordansky Gallery
Aaron Curry
Untitled, 2013
Courtesy the artist and the gallery

For Public Opening Night on Wednesday, Kate Gilmore has created ‘Only One Like You’, a new performance that builds on themes introduced in her 2011 Public Art Fund project. In this large-scale performance, lining both sides of the central axis through the park, performers, who will share a number of physical characteristics, will stand on individual pedestals, wielding sledgehammers, and pounding metal cubes, creating in the process a series of destroyed sculptures. Taking the basic elements of human presence and bodily movement as his raw materials, Ryan McNamara’s new performance ’Uncanny Liquidity’ intends to tweak perceptions and provoke curiosity. Two performers are placed in Collins Park, dressed to blend into the crowd. Their subtle movements betray the fact that something is not quite right, prompting visitors to observe them more closely. As the night goes on, their difference from the rest of the crowd grows more acute. For ‘Smoke Grid’ Olaf Breuning will simultaneously set off smoke canisters to create a sea of colored smoke. The installation transforms its environment into a swirling painterly mass of color and movement, generating unique visual effects as the smoke and pigment erupt and disperse. A new sound installation by Mungo Thomson will be created that evening. Four musicians playing different instruments – clarinet, flute, violin and percussion – will imitate the song of crickets. Recordings of the performance will be played in Collins Park throughout the rest of the week. For the fourth performance of the evening, entitled ‘Santa Confessional’, David Colman installs a classic Catholic confessional within Collins Park for people to confess their sins and ask for absolution. Instead of the booth being fully enclosed like a classic confessional, open-air windows cut into the design, creating a tension between yesterday’s private practice of confessing in secret and today’s more performative and secular version of confession.

Public Opening Night, which is free and open to the public, takes place in Collins Park on Wednesday, December 4, from 8.30pm to 10pm. The Public sector is also free of charge and open to the public from December 4 to December 8.

Collins Park is located between 21st & 22nd Street, in close proximity of the exhibition halls within the Miami Beach Convention Center and adjacent to The Bass Museum of Art.

On 25 November 2013 artBahrain sets out to create a strong visual dialogue between a selection of works by two Bahraini artists and two Iraqi artists in an exhibition entitled “In Dialogue” at Waterline Gallery at the Bahrain Financial Harbour.

In Dialogue brings together for the first time the works of prominent contemporary artists Rashid Al Khalifa, Modhir Ahmed, Walid Siti and Abdulrahim Sharif – four artists with differing mediums who continually produce ideas in context with contemporary currents in art and politics.

Rashid Al Khalifa. Yellow Sun With Orange, 2013. Chrome convex with enamel paint work,
90 x 90 cm

“In Dialogue” is Rashid Al Khalifa and Walid Siti’s use of ‘line’ as the basic element of expression. Both artists play with the delicate balance of planes and movement, and share an interest in breaking with mainstream treatments of painting, extending wall-based artwork.

Walid Siti. Skylines, 2013. Inkjet print on paper,105 x 140 cm edition of 5

Modhir Ahmed. Detail of The Town installation, 2001

“In Dialogue” is Modhir Ahmed and Abdulrahim Sharif‘s display of the power of life within the invasive evocations of paint and the human figure whether on canvas or paper, showing how their ideas and formal innovations ripple through contemporary practice.

Abdulrahim Sharif. River of Sin, 2013. Oil on canvas, 100 x 120 cm

Created to inspire the artistic talents in Bahrain, “In Dialogue” is the first series of commissions geared toward providing local artists with a new platform to create an ambitious project and contribute to the growth of Bahrain as a creative destination.

“In Dialogue” will open at 7.00pm, for all to attend and will remain open until 25 January 2014. It will be open to the public Sunday- Thursday, 10am-7pm and Friday and Saturday, 12pm-6pm.

This 5-day spectacular will feature over 600 exhibitors from 30 nations who will spread their precious wares across an area of 18,200 square metres. On display will be a huge range of finished jewellery, luxury timepieces, precious stones, antiques, objet d’arts, jewellery packaging and technology from across the globe.

Jewellery Arabia 2013 is set to be 10% bigger than the previous exhibition and visitors can look forward to a number of new and exciting participants, including high end Italian jeweller Bulgari and multi-national celebrity jeweller Mouawad. Jewellery Arabia 2013 will also witness the first official group participation from the UK, coordinated by British Allied Trades Federation (BATF), and Singapore, coordinated by the Singapore Association of Small & Medium Enterprises (ASME).

Event director Fawzi Al Shehabi said that exhibitor interest in Jewellery Arabia is particularly strong this year.

Eminent jewellery houses and watch manufacturers making a return appearance at Jewellery Arabia 2013 include Chopard, David Morris, Gaspari, Harry Winston, Piaget and Staurino Fratelli amongst numerous others.

Watches also remain a prominent feature in 2013. Visitors can source the latest in design and manufacture from a vast range of important brands including A. Lange & Söhne, Audemars Piguet, Breguet, Baume & Mercier, Corum, Hublot, Omega, Officine Panerai, Patek Philippe and Vacheron Constantin to name just
a few.

Many of these high profile international jewellery and watch brands will use the exhibition as a platform to introduce exclusive collections and limited edition pieces to the Middle East collector’s market.

Complementing these iconic brands are large national groups of retailers, designers and manufacturers from leading jewellery export countries. National groups at Jewellery Arabia 2013 include Brazil, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Singapore and the UK. Collectively, these groups of companies reflect the very best manufacturing capabilities, design expertise and gemmological resources that their respective countries have to offer.

Joining international brands and national groups are and a host of independent companies from all over the world, led by a selection of Bahrain’s leading jewellers. They include Bahrain Jewellery Centre, Asia Jewellers, Al Mahmood Pearls, Al Zain and Devji among others.

Last year’s show attracted over 46,300 visitors. Of the total, 25% were drawn from the region’s single largest jewellery market – Saudi Arabia, with significant support also coming from Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and other neighbouring countries.

New Timings for 2013

Jewellery Arabia will open from 16.00 to 22.00 on Tuesday 19 November to Friday 22 November. On Saturday 23 October the exhibition will open from 12.00 to 22.00.

The 9th Middle East Watches, Jewellery and Pen Awards

Further highlighting the importance of Jewellery Arabia to the Middle East jewellery and watch industry, for the ninth successive year, the Middle East Premier Awards for Watches, Jewellery and Pens will be held on the sidelines of the exhibition at the Ritz Carlton Hotel Bahrain on 19 November.

Hosted by MPP ME, publishers of the industry magazine title Arabian Watches and Jewellery (AWJ), the Awards are the culmination of an online public voting system and the analysis of an elite committee comprising of watch, jewellery and pen experts.

Fostering cohesion amongst Jewellery Arabia participants whilst also acknowledging their individual contribution to the industry, the ceremony will be a star-studded event with the expected presence of specially invited dignitaries and senior professionals representing the international and regional watch, jewellery and  pen industries.

In addition to the core commercial fair, with its increasingly impressive line up of top flight galleries, Abu Dhabi Art 2013 has added a thoughtfully prepared a rich programme of extra “happenings”. Street performances, poetry readings in the desert, film screenings, architecture pavilions, tours of the city by boat and bus, art talks, installations and “interventions” are all enticingly and appropriately themed around “dunes”, “waves” and “wings”.

This festival of events is sure to enrich what can become to jaded art fair visitors a depressingly familiar experience of endless meandering through mazes of ill-lit booths – that even to the most passionate art lover – can come to feel after day two like a Kafka-esque dream where one is trapped eternally in the anonymous and sterile halls of a convention center that could be anywhere in the world.

Abu Dhabi Art, of course, takes place on enchanted Saadiyat Island and the organizers have taken great care to incorporate the beauty of the natural surroundings, plus the city’s thriving cultural community, to create a lively spectacle for the visitor not just to the fair but also to Abu Dhabi itself.

To give a flavor of the unique offerings this year, Egyptian artist, Wael Shawky will present a video piece about the Bedouin’s tradition of reciting poetry to their camels. Emirati poets Mohamed Al Mazroui and Aita Ben Masaaoud will read Classical Arab and Nabati poems on the beaches of Abu Dhabi’s Corniche and traditional dhows will depart from Mina (port) functioning as mobile galleries.

ARTISTS’ WAVES

One of the new additions Artists’ Waves, is a programme that focuses on the “discovery” and “re-discovery” of artists. Selected artworks by innovative artists will be presented in a critically curated exhibition uniquely designed to reflect the dynamism of new artistic movements and in order to showcase shifting perceptions of art.

EMI

Emirati Expressions: Realised will feature a series of exhibitions and programmes exclusively highlighting the work of Emirati artists. The essence of Emirati Expressions is to present commonalities in the visual languages and art practice of Emirati artists by highlighting their linked history of connected experience and collaboration.

Participating artists include Abdullah Al Saadi, Ebtisam Abdulaziz, Layla Juma, Mohamed Al Mazrouei, Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim and Mohammed Kazem. Emirati Expressions: Realised was curated by Reem Fadda, Associate Curator for Middle Eastern Art, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Project and Maisa Al Qassimi, Programmes, Manager, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.

ABU DHABI ART WINGS PROJECT

The designs of six Emirati artists have won the Abu Dhabi Art Wings Project, a competition organised by TCA Abu Dhabi, as part of the wider Abu Dhabi Art Design Programme. The competition received an enormously positive response from a multitude of artists challenged to create new concepts featuring the Abu Dhabi Art ‘wing’ logo.

The winning designs will be on display in Artyfact, the merchandise space in Manarat Al Saadiyat and throughout the Fair on printed materials, advertising and other related collateral. The artists will also be part of the wider education programme of Abu Dhabi Art this year.

DURUB AL TAWAYA

Durub Al Tawaya, another first time happening at Abu Dhabi Art is an exciting multi-stage project that incorporates a series of “Interventions” placed throughout the city of Abu Dhabi, thereby creating routes that connect the multitude of artistic events, performances, public art pieces, concerts and installations.

The path taken by Durub Al Tawaya will connect four points of significance, or tawaya, within the city: Manarat Al Saadiyat, Mina Zayed, Corniche Beach and Marina Mall.

At each of the four stops a series of cultural activities organised in collaboration with various artistic communities and institutions in the city will take place. Durub Al Tawaya will showcase a diversity of artistic practices; contemporary dance, video installation and poetry and audiences will be invited to join in this journey that blurs the border between art viewers and the artists themselves.

Inspired by the experience of a journey, not just its final destination, contemporary artists have even been commissioned to create interventions inside the public buses that will transport through the city. The result is that the buses themselves will become moving artworks, roaming Abu Dhabi while connecting art spaces, historical locations and meeting points.

Galleries & Artists

This year, Abu Dhabi Art will draw 50 leading modern, contemporary art and design galleries from around the world. The galleries will be arranged into sections making navigation for collectors more user friendly and will be carved into five distinct areas.

The categories are: Modern and Contemporary Art, Design, Beyond (for large scale sculpture, video installations and performances), Bidaya, the Arabic work for beginning and thus dedicated to one emergent gallery launching its journey on the international art scene; and finally, Signature, for galleries showcasing emerging artists.

Dubai-based gallery Lawrie Shabibi will be this year’s Bidaya Gallery, exhibiting works by gallery artists Nabil Nahas and Farghali Abdel Hafiz alongside Meekyoung Shin from Korea and Yudi Noor from Indonesia.

Arts, Talks and Sensations

The annual interactive element of the fair, Art, Talks & Sensations, will return with a programme of performance, screenings and poetry titled “Dunes and Waves”.

International artists including Chassol, Alexdrine Leclere and Julie Fruchon will present live performances, video screenings, poetic installations and “human architectures” created by performers in movement.

Fabrice Bousteau, the French curator who oversees the programme, has also organised two parallel exhibitions for this year’s show: Small is Beautiful, featuring small-scale artworks from galleries participating in the Modern, Contemporary & Design sector.

Film

Where are the Arabs? 

A Sharjah Art Foundation Film Programme curated by Hoor Al Qassimi will be presented as part of Abu Dhabi Art.

The series of films reflect on the question: Where are the Arabs? and include work by artists: Monika Borgrmann, Joanna Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Rania Stephan, Jalal Toufic and Graziella Toufic, Lamia Joreige, Jayce Salloum, Akram Zaatari, Monira Al Solh, Simone Fattal and Samah Hijawi. Two programmes of films will screen on alternate days from 20-23 November inside a specially-designed screening room.

Central Events Garden, Manarat Al Saadiyat. Open 15:00-22:00 Wednesday and Thursday, and 14:00-23:00 Friday and Saturday.

Architecture

The Manarat Al Saadiyat, the fair’s main venue, will house a temporary souk this year. Designed by Japanese architect Shegiru Ban, it will house projects and works by Emirati designers including furniture, product design, jewellery, textiles and handicrafts. The programme will also have a particular focus on architecture that is connected to the region, from the earliest inhabitants who adapted to climate and terrain using temporary and mobile structures, to present-day innovations.