Art Dubai 2023

– Sunday, Mar 5, 2023

Madinat Jumeirah Conference & Events Centre
Dubai – United Arab Emirates
Johara Hall – booth E3

This year’s Art Dubai will take place from 1–5 March 2023 as part of Art Week at the Madinat Jumeirah hotel, leisure and business centre – very close to the famous Burj Al Arab – in the emirate’s capital. The focus of the fair – considered the most important of its kind in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia – is on contemporary art.

The fair has been held annually since 2007 and is enjoying increasing popularity. Gallery Dr Dorothea van der Koelen took part in Art Dubai for the first time in 2010. The gallery programme – concrete – conceptual – constructive – meets the taste of both the international public at Art Dubai as well as the local Emirati collectors. Above all, the renunciation of figurative representation, but also the use of characters as design elements, attract Arab art connoisseurs under their spell and to the stand of the Mainz gallery.

After 2019 the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Dr. Dorothea van der Koelen Gallery in Mainz with the show Was – Is – Will Be and 2021 of the 20th anniversary of the branch La Galleria in Venice (Italy) with the show Milestones – 20 Years of La Galleria a Venezia, German gallerist, publisher, consultant and art historian Dr. phil. Dorothea van der Koelen presents in her gallery in Venice in the summer of 2022 – parallel to the Venice International Arts Biennial – the exhibition In the Change of Time.

At the same time her relations to Korea manifested by presenting a huge one man show on two floors of the CADORO in Mainz – the Centre of Art and Science – of the monochrome Korean artist Nam Tchun-Mo.

In Dubai, an extract of these exhibitions will be presented with the works of the world wide known paper artist Lore Bert, the Austrian conceptual artist Heinz Gappmayr, the Korean monochrome master Nam Tchun-Mo, the German ZERO artist Günther Uecker, the Italian ZERO artist Turi Simeti, the most recent works by the famous UAE artist Mohammed Kazem, who created 2 situated works for the “Sustainable Pavilion” of the World Expo 2020 in Dubai as well as one experimental artist of the younger generation Sebastian Dannenberg.

Artists

The Mainz artist Lore Bert (*1936) is a master of paper. She works with her preferred material in many different ways. She creates pictorial objects from thousands of ‘crumpled’ squares of Japanese paper, gouaches in soft earthy colours, colourful collages or cotton wool–filled transparencies made from paper cushions.

Sebastian Dannenberg locates painting in space. His artistic interventions manage the balancing act between spatial reference and the autonomous quality of a transportable work. His approach making painting happen where it normally does not is an additive procedure. Dannenberg’s works open up a new view of the supposedly familiar.

Heinz Gappmayr is one of the leading representants of visual poetry. Backing material of Gappmayr’s work is language. He uses letters, words, numbers, occasionally lines and geometrical forms to analyse the categorical possibilities of language itself. In this way, he liberates language itself from its function as carrier of meaning and makes it an artwork.

Mohammed Kazem, the shooting star from the United Arab Emirates, has enriched the Arab art world for many years. His works, which cover a broad spectrum from painterly execution to sculptures and installations, often deal with positions and locations. Where things and places are – absolute and relative to each other – are questions that preoccupy the artist.

Joseph Kosuth is the pioneer of American conceptual art. To him, the artistic idea takes priority over the physical realization. He devoted himself intensively to the study of philosophy and uses language as an artistic tool. Similar to Minimal Art, he reduces the artistic intervention and replaces the visual representation with language.

The South Korean artist Nam Tchun-Mo is attributed to the Dansaekhwa movement. Dansaekhwa works in a radically abstract and mostly monochrome way and is perhaps most comparable to the European ZERO movement in this respect. Formally, Nam Tchun-Mo’s works are largely reduced to the basic element of the drawn line.

The Italian ZERO artist Turi Simeti – who worked with the famous ZERO avant-gardist Lucio Fontana – is known for his monochrome works with minimalist and clear forms. Typical for him are the ovals that adorn his works. They rise from the canvas and lift his works from the second to the third dimension.

The German ZERO artist Günther Uecker is internationally known for his nail paintings. He creates works of impressive intensity by applying the metal pins to the picture support and then working on them with paint. Less well known are his watercolours and his embossed prints.

Dr.  Dorothea  van der Koelen

Galerie