Feast for the senses

Katie Boucher

• Last Updated: November 19. 2009 4:06PM UAE / November 19. 2009 12:06PM GMT

Whether or not you’re in the market to buy art, a visit to the Emirates Palace this weekend will provide an opportunity for full immersion as Abu Dhabi Art takes hold of the city. Organised by the Tourism Development and Investment Company, the event is a sprawling beast, with exhibitions, parties, workshops, lectures and live performances, as well as 50 of the world’s top galleries and their wares.

And with the Manarat al Saadiyat opening on Saadiyat Island, it’s time to pay a visit to the city’s newest venue, open to the public for the first time from Sunday (from 11am Saturday for Abu Dhabi Art guests). The cavernous 15,400-square-metre space, which houses four galleries and a theatre, will provide a base for the city’s cultural events in the heart of what will, by 2012 or so, house the Louvre Abu Dhabi and Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Museums.

Here’s our guide to some of the unmissable events that will be taking place in both venues over the next few days.

Exhibitions

Special exhibition, Emirates Palace. Seven galleries, including Gagosian Gallery, Richard Gray Gallery, L&M Arts and PaceWildenstein, will present important works by such giants of contemporary art as Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, Paul Cézanne, Alexander Calder, Frantisek Kupka, Andy Warhol and Francis Bacon.

Beyond, Emirates Palace. The gardens will be transformed into a labyrinth of sculptures, installations and site-specific public works by Subodh Gupta, Ravinder Reddy, Louise Bourgeois and Robert Indiana, among others.



Signature, Emirates Palace. If you saw the Emirati Expressions exhibition earlier in the year, many of the names participating in this emerging artists’ section of the fair will be familiar. Among them are Abdul Rahim Salim, Lamya Gargash, Fatima al Mazrouei and Reem al Ghaith, whose work will be presented in the Emirati Expressions booth, curated by Anne Baldassari, the director of the Musée National Picasso in Paris. Several participating international galleries will also present solo exhibitions by emerging artists from their respective regions.

The Funerals of Mona Lisa, Emirates Palace. Taking up the central part of the hotel’s domed foyer is a monumental display of works by the Franco-Chinese artist Yan Pei-Ming. The five huge canvases that make up the exhibition, which most recently was shown in the hallowed Musée du Louvre in Paris, show different points in time in the life of the Leonardo da Vinci painting as well as the artist himself.

Disorientation II, Manarat al Saadiyat, Saadiyat Island (open to to Abu Dhabi Art guests from 11am on Saturday and the public from 4pm on Sunday). Curated by Jack Persekian, the artistic director of the Sharjah Biennial, Disorientation II features 16 of the region’s most prolific artists, including Ali Jabri, Diana al Hadid, Kader Attia, Marwan Rechmaoui, Mona Hatoum and Tarek al Ghoussein. Their works, which range from installations to sculpture, photography and music, focus on the theme of the rise and fall of Arab cities.

The artist Samah Hijawi will give a free speech performance and intervention project, and Tarek Atoui will showcase a contemporary sound performance from 7-8pm on Saturday.

Massaker, a documentary by the Beirut-based filmmaker Monika Borgmann about the killings that took place in Sabra and Shatila in 1982, will be screened at 8.30pm on Sunday.



Guggenheim: The Making of a Museum, Gallery One, Emirates Palace. More than 50 paintings from the collection of the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in New York will be on display, representing many of the most important artists of the 20th century, including Piet Mondrian, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell and Willem de Kooning.

Public programme

Art, Talks and Sensations: The Wings Party, Thursday, 7pm-11.30pm, Emirates Palace (registration is essential at www.abudhabiartfair.ae).

An experimental mix of artworks, performances, discussions and music and featuring artists, architects, designers, DJs, musicians, poets and philosophers is organised by Fabrice Bousteau, the curator and editor of Beaux Arts magazine, and will take place on the beach at the Emirates Palace.

Design workshops

Sevil Peach, Volume and Repetition, Friday, 10am-6pm, Design Studio, Emirates Palace. The contemporary British designer will look at how familiar and simple materials can be rediscovered with a new meaning.

Max Lamb, pewter casting, Saturday, 10am-6pm, Design Studio, Emirates Palace. The British designer will host a day-long interactive workshop on the traditional process.

Maarten Baas, cardboard design, Sunday, 10am-6pm, Design Studio, Emirates Palace. The Dutch designer will look at improvisation with tape and cardboard.

Design performances

Max Lamb, sand casting, today and Friday, 5-7pm, Design Studio/beach, Emirates Palace. Lamb will use sand from the beach to create small objects.

Maarten Bass, Analog Digital Clock, today until Sunday, 4-10pm, Design Studio/beach. Baas will recreate his work in real time.

Design Moment, today until Sunday, 4-10pm, Emirates Palace. Five cutting-edge designers from the region, including the Emirati graphic designer Reem al Ghaith and the product designers Ahmed Angawi from Saudi Arabia, Nedda al Asmar from Palestine, Younes Duret from Morocco, and the furniture designers Huda Barouis and Maria Hibri from Lebanon, will work in an open studio creating contemporary design using local traditions, techniques and materials.

Lectures and discussions

Paris-Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi – Alexander Calder: Movement, Abstraction and Reality, today, 10am-noon, Majlis Theatre, Emirates Palace. The abstract art specialist and professor of contemporary art at the Sorbonne Arnauld Pierre will re-examine the work of the sculptor Alexander Calder.

New York University Abu Dhabi panel discussion – Collecting Then and Now, Friday, 3-5pm, Majlis Theatre, Emirates Palace. Dr Roger Mandle, the executive director of the Qatar Museums Authority; Larry Gagosian, the owner and the CEO of Gagosian Gallery, and Dr Farhad Farjam, a Dubai-based collector, will discuss the issues surrounding art collection. Who collects art and why, and has the economic crisis affected how the world collects?

Talking Art: Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, panel discussion – From Private to Public: Patronage and the Museum in the Modern Era, Friday 6-8pm, Gallery One Auditorium, Emirates Palace. Richard Armstrong, the director of the Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation and Museum in New York, will present an overview of the museum’s early history before moderating this discussion between Bruce Altshuler, the director of the museum studies programme at New York University; Stefan Edlis and Gael Neeson, collectors from Chicago, and Anthony d’Offay, the founder of Anthony d’Offay Gallery, about the patterns of collecting through history and how they link to the formation of museums.

New York University Abu Dhabi – Looking Twice: The Art of the Double Image, Saturday, 10am-noon, Majlis Theatre, Emirates Palace. Reindert Falkenberg, the dean of arts and humanities at New York University Abu Dhabi, will draw on the works of Picasso, Rothko and Lichtenstein in this talk about modern masters.



Art in the Middle East, panel discussion, Saturday, 4-6pm, Majlis Theatre, Emirates Palace. The panelists Jack Persekian, Suha Shoman, Hans Ulrich Obrist, William Wells and Antonia Carver will discuss the notion and role of art in the region.

Design: Big & Little, panel discussion, Sunday, 6.30-8pm, Majlis Theatre, Emirates Palace. Moderated by Deyan Sudjic, the director of the Design Museum, London and in collaboration with Vitra Design, the panelists Max Lamb, Maarten Baas, Reem al Ghaith and Ahmed Angawi will discuss how design operates, from the retrieval of trees from the Finnish forest to Ikea chairs, and the transformation of steel sheets into Nissan cars.

Book launches and signings

In Absentia: Photographs by Tarek al Ghoussein, today, 5-6pm, Majlis Gallery, Emirates Palace. The Palestinian artist, whose work is being shown at Disorientation II, will launch his Arabic-language work. Antonia Carver and Jack Persekian will also discuss the relationship between al Ghoussein’s work and his home country.

International Prize for Arabic Fiction, today, 6-7pm, Artyfact, Emirates Palace. The winner and shortlisted authors of the coveted prize will sign their Arabic-language works.

Abu Dhabi Art runs from 10am to 10pm today until Sunday at Emirates Palace. All events are open to the public. The design workshops and Art, Talks and Sensations: The Wings Party require preregistration and operate on a first come, first served basis. For more information on Abu Dhabi Art go to www.abudhabiartfair.ae