DUBAI.- Lawrie Shabibi announced its participation in not cancelled - a week-long digital art event featuring several invited Dubai galleries from 29 May until 6 June 2020. Each of the galleries will present two artists from their programme, and throughout the week the online event will feature walk-throughs and exclusive interviews with the gallerists and artists involved.
Lawrie Shabibi will present new works by Shahpour Pouyan and Ishmael Randall Weeks. Ishmael Randall Weeks, whose show was cancelled due to the gallery closures in March, presents five works from the series Codigos Atemporales. These are wall sculptures that are composed of stratifications of materials taken from objective explorations of his city Cusco. The works reference geological cuts, tailings and the layering of human and organic sediments that contemplate the composition of time and how we form it as a society. Created layer by layer, without following any fixed pattern or correlation, other than the idea of a visual diary that explores the potential of abstract samples with a fictional (and real) reference to archaeology, anthropology and architecture.
Shahpour Pouyan on the other hand presents two-dimensional miniatures, a continuation of a series he started in 2008, that are reproductions of medieval and pre-modern paintings from Iran and central Asia that are edited (digitally and manually) to remove any of the characters. Without the protagonists, what remains are city scenes, landcsapes and public spaces bereft of people – a solitary bathhouse for example or an empty doorway. These arresting paintings, ironically executed before the pandemic, resonate with our collective lockdown experiences.
Not cancelled is run by Treat Agency whose founder and CEO wanted to offer support to its local art scene in the wake of the global COVID-19 pandemic. After a successful launch in Vienna in April, they expanded with a Berlin iteration, followed by Paris and Warsaw and a variety of cities to follow.
Participating galleries and artists: Carbon 12: Amir Khojasteh (b.Iran, 1988) and Monika Grabuschnigg (b.1987, Austria) Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde: Vikram Divecha (b.1977, Beirut), Artist duo:mentalKLINIK i.e. Yasemin Baydar (b.1972, Istanbul) and Birol Demir (b.1967, Ankara) Green Art Gallery: Alessandro Balteo-Yazbeck (b. 1972, Venezuela) Grey Noise, Dubai: Charbel-joseph H. Boutros (b.1981, Lebanon) and Stéphanie Saadé (b.1983, Lebanon) Lawrie Shabibi: Shahpour Pouyan (b. Iran 1979) and Ishmael Randall Weeks (b.Perù , 1976) The Third Line: Sara Naim (b. 1987, London) and Tarek Al Ghoussein (b. 1962, Kuwait)
