After an incredibly warm reception, Custot Gallery Dubai is extending our current exhibition until the 31 October 2019. The group show features paintings and sculptures by the international modern and contemporary artists Etel Adnan, Ron Arad, Fernando Botero, Ian Davenport, Barry Flanagan, Richard Höglund, Fernand Léger, Umberto Mariani, Joan Miró, Jedd Novatt, Marc Quinn, Pablo Reinoso, Sophia Vari, Bernar Venet, and Fabienne Verdier.
Highlights of the show include various works by Marc Quinn, the most prominent figures of the Young British Artists group, who makes art about what it means to exist as a person in this world. The Eye of History (Polar Perspective) Red, 2012 from his Iris series, responds to the paranoid state of society and the notion of 24-hour news, where the entire world is constantly connected through ever-present media. The iris reflects the fact that, in the age of the internet, the visual sense dominates our perception of the world. Over the eye are images of the world map from various perspectives, displaying how the boundaries of experience and geographical territory as we know them are rapidly changing. Also on display are three bronze sculptures from The Nurseries of El Dorado series. These works place together botanical elements which would never be found together in nature to transport the viewer into a mythical world.
French artist, Fabienne Verdier’s masterpiece titled Ascèse from 2015 is presented alongside an iconic mosaic by Fernand Léger. Verdier’s circular composition explores the relationship between negative and positive space. For the artist, the circle is the most elementary of forms and is used as a symbol to represent the center of the cosmos. While Verdier stands in the middle of the canvas with her brush, she uses herself as a sort of compass and with a 360-degree rotating movement, she sets the mark of the circle around herself into the space of her canvas. Fernand Léger saw the potential in creating works using different materials and thus, began to work outside the studio on various wall murals and mosaics, which in turn expanded his relationship with the scale, form, and light.
Within the space, Peter Halley's work from 2005 tilted Collocation is displayed. Halley is a contemporary American artist best known for his neon coloured geometric paintings. From the early stages of his career in the 1980s, Halley has explored motifs relating to the grided composition of our cities, jail cells, and barred windows. The artist's vibrant palette combined with the rigidity of his shapes responds to the physical and psychological structures of social space.