Latest news with #BortolamiGallery
Web Release
16-04-2025
- Business
- Web Release
Art Dubai to Launch 18th Edition Amid Surge in UAE Wealth
Art Dubai is set to return for its 18th edition next week, promising an invigorated showcase of contemporary art against the backdrop of Dubai's growing reputation as a cultural and financial hub. Running from April 16, with a VIP preview, at the Madinat Jumeirah, this year's fair will feature over 120 galleries, accompanied by a slate of new commissions, digital installations, and panel discussions — all aimed at exploring the interplay between culture and technology within today's art world. Since its founding in 2007, Art Dubai has positioned itself as far more than just a commercial fair. It has evolved into a creative incubator where regional voices meet global audiences, cementing its identity as a cultural bridge within the Middle East. This year's edition arrives at a moment when Dubai's art scene is experiencing newfound momentum, propelled by regional biennials and festivals that are putting the spotlight on Gulf art. Recent additions to the region's cultural calendar — including the Sharjah Biennial, which held its 16th edition in February, and Saudi Arabia's second Islamic Arts Biennale, launched this January — reflect the Middle East's ambitious vision to develop as an international arts destination. Events such as the AlUla Arts Festival and Art Week Riyadh further solidify Saudi Arabia and the UAE's standing as serious players in the global cultural landscape. This surge in cultural programming has not gone unnoticed by international galleries. Among this year's first-time exhibitors is New York-based Bortolami Gallery, whose participation signals growing Western interest in the region's market and creative networks. Senior director Evan Reiser described their presence at the fair as an 'exploratory mission' to better understand local collectors, meet artists, and assess future opportunities. 'We have to try to understand the market ahead of time and understand what people are looking for, meeting the obligation to our artists to introduce their work to new audiences,' Reiser noted. The gallery will present works by an impressive roster of artists including Daniel Buren, Robert Bordo, and Leda Catunda, providing visitors a diverse glimpse into contemporary art's global landscape. As Dubai's art fair matures, its local gallery scene is expanding in tandem. Sunny Rahbar, founder of The Third Line — one of the city's pioneering contemporary art galleries — notes the accelerating pace of growth. 'The art scene is booming,' Rahbar told ARTnews. 'So many galleries have opened in the last three or four years.' She attributes the post-pandemic surge to Dubai's swift reopening to tourism and its global reputation for resilience. Dubai's appeal has drawn not only Western collectors but also a wave of Arab expatriates, from Lebanon, Egypt, and Iran, who now see the UAE as both a cultural and economic home. Reflecting that sentiment, The Third Line will exhibit works by Amir H. Fallah, Hayv Kahraman, and Kamran Samimi at this year's fair — each representing contemporary voices from the Middle East and its diaspora. Art Dubai has become a symbol of the UAE's larger economic diversification strategy. Once heavily dependent on oil, the UAE's government has worked for more than a decade to reposition the Emirates as a cultural and business hub for the region. Landmark initiatives, such as the Saadiyat Island cultural district — home to the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the future Guggenheim Abu Dhabi — are testament to the country's commitment to investing in the arts. Non-oil sectors now account for nearly 75% of the UAE's GDP, with non-oil growth reaching 4.6% last year and projected to climb to 5% in 2025. Art Dubai, while modest in size compared to global fairs like Art Basel, continues to mirror this economic momentum and offers collectors, galleries, and artists an increasingly attractive gateway to the Middle Eastern art market. As Mohammed Hafiz, cofounder of Jeddah-based ATHR gallery, puts it: 'The art market in Dubai, like the economy, is growing — it's maturing. You can't compare the UAE or Saudi Arabia to New York, of course, but, like anywhere in the art world, you travel to meet people and build relationships, and these relationships grow with time.' This growth isn't confined to art alone. The rise in high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) is reshaping Dubai's luxury ecosystem. A report by New World Wealth and Henley & Partners predicted a 39% surge in the number of HNWIs in the UAE between 2021 and 2026, from 160,000 to more than 228,000. Dubai itself has seen the number of millionaires double over the past decade, with forecasts suggesting this figure will double again by 2035. 'This is already impacting favorably on the luxury market in the region and will only stand to benefit Art Dubai and the galleries here in Dubai, which is very much the center of the Gulf and regional art market,' said Ben Floyd, CEO of Art Dubai Group. To further strengthen its international profile, Art Dubai recently announced two significant leadership hires. Dunja Gottweis, formerly Art Basel's global head of gallery relations, was appointed as the new fair director, while Alexie Glass-Kantor, previously executive director of Artspace in Sydney, has stepped into the newly created role of executive director, curatorial. These appointments are already generating increased attention from collectors, partners, and galleries eager to enter the region's art market. Much like Hong Kong's transformation into a gateway for global art and commerce, Dubai's blend of free trade zones, world-class security, and British-style legal frameworks continues to attract international talent and investment. Art Dubai, as both a cultural and commercial platform, is poised to evolve into a vital meeting ground for the international art world and a key barometer for the Gulf's flourishing creative economy.
New York Times
27-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Paul Mpagi Sepuya's Photos Reverberate With Scenes of Their Own Making
In Paul Mpagi Sepuya's new photographs, there is no mistaking where we are: Camera tripods stand like machinic bodies, studio lights cast their lurid shine upon things, and the walls are busy with what appear to be the artist's photo prints. The fourth wall between the photographer's studio and the art gallery has come down, and we are peering into the womb from which images are born. Such disclosures are the animating principle behind the 13 photographs on view in 'Trance,' Sepuya's second show at Bortolami Gallery in TriBeCa. Shot with digital cameras, Sepuya's scenes depict the process of image-making, revealing his world of cameras, curtains and other equipment. Sepuya also turns his incisive lens upon the realm his pictures enter once they leave the studio; seven images in the show were taken in the very gallery in which they are on display. Our own space of viewing is reflected back at us. Sepuya, 43, became a force in the photo world after the 2019 Whitney Biennial. He is known for his meticulous interrogation of photography, using myriad techniques to explore how images are constructed — an inquiry that leads, ultimately, to an exploration of seeing itself. Mirrors and other reflective surfaces mediate the view of the camera, opening up a world of layered reflections. In 'Photographing (DSF4950),' a man reflected in a mirror holds a camera to his eye, and it is as if we are being photographed; a sliver of his back is shown in another mirror. On the wall behind him is a framed photograph by Sepuya in which a pair of embracing arms holds another camera, creating an echo of images inside images. The result, which demands a visual deciphering that is both delightful and maddening, recalls art-historical traditions, including Velázquez's celebrated 'Las Meninas,' in which the king and queen of Spain, whom the artist is painting, appear in a mirror behind him. It also calls to mind contemporary work, like Jeff Wall's 'Picture for Women,' which shows Wall at work in his studio gazing at the subject he is photographing. But Sepuya's images do more than invite the viewer behind the scenes. They become an instrument with which the artist, with forensic precision and delicate vulnerability, dissects the inner life of his medium. Sepuya's previous work in the Whitney Biennial, as well as his 2019 solo exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, lavished attention on the body and its expressions of queer desire (in particular, his own body in intimate positions with friends and lovers). In 'Trance,' however, many of the photographs seem to be absent of people. At times, this specificity of attention, to the medium of photography, can begin to feel repetitive and limited. But the mystery in Sepuya's photographs keeps this seriality interesting. For example, when Sepuya's body does come into view, his presence is uncertain. In 'Night Studio Mirror (DSF1073),' Sepuya makes use of double exposure, rendering the contours of his body a blurred rush. In 'Gallery Mirror (DSCF1114),' 'Gallery Gazing Ball' and 'Gallery Gazing Ball Negative,' shot inside Bortolami, we see only his hands. Elsewhere, he appears as a barely discernible reflection. The artist's presence becomes an unstable fact, or even an unresolvable question. Another clever and strange optical contrivance recurs in 'Trance': mirrored gazing balls. In them, we glimpse distended, fish-eye-like reflections of the studio or the gallery, redoubling and widening our view. It is almost as if we've gained a third eye. In 'Gazing Ball Position 02 (DSF2658)' and 'Gallery Gazing Ball Negative,' the balls sit atop tripods, as if ready to capture us. It's an almost uncanny substitution: It seems this other device for looking has usurped the camera. 'Gallery Gazing Ball Negative,' which depicts the empty interior of Bortolami and its cavernous reflection in the gazing ball, involves another kind of revelation: the photographic negative. Here, and in three other negative images in the show, Sepuya brings to the surface the technical foundations that lie beneath the developed picture. The triumph of the show is 'Studio Mirror Diptych (DSF3596 ),' an architectonic photo-installation mounted on a wheeled frame called a mobile flat, a device Sepuya often uses to mount mirrors in his studio. A series of self-reflexive maneuvers unfolds from there: A mobile flat almost identical to one in the gallery appears in the right panel of the diptych, as if the very object before us lives in the image itself. This view is reflected in a free-standing mirror in the left panel. The entire scene is shot in a different mirror, textured with smudges and dirt, in which we see part of Sepuya's reflection behind the camera. In this diptych the construction of the image and its reception — the studio and the gallery — bleed together. The universe inside the frame and the one beyond its edge seem to swallow each other, and the act of looking at an image slowly folds into the feeling of being a part of it.
