April 2014 Newsletter

  • View the online newsletter here

After a successful participating in Art Dubai Modern, during its debut year, Albareh Art Gallery was honored to present a booth showcasing two Bahraini artists, the late Nasser Al Yousif and Sheikh Rashid Al Khalifa. The gallery made a strong impression on the audience and gathered extensive press coverage from publications such as Artsy, Artworldnow and Kuwaiti blog Almahha. Interest on both artists has been raised on the part of institutions and prominent collectors.


 


Our inaugural exhibition of the year 2014, “50 Years of Printmaking”, a retrospective of Sudanese master painter and printmaker Mohammed Omar Khalil, one of the pioneers in art from the Middle East in the 20th century, is moving to Kuwait, opening on the 23rd of April at the exhibition space of Contemporary Art Platform and curated locally by Abed Al Kadiri. The exhibition will from the 24th of April through the 15th of June. 


This unique exhibition, showcasing his printmaking work from the 1960s until present, and giving a rare glimpse into the body of work of an artist that has remained focused on the region, is accompanied by a book edited and printed by Albareh with critical essays written by prominent authors and curated by the gallery. The exhibition will continue traveling later in the year and further dates and venues will be announced in a timely manner. 


 


The gallery is hosting from the 7th of April “Awaiting”, the first solo exhibition in Bahrain of Hossam Dirar, one of the best profiled emerging artists from Egypt. Dirar is an interdisciplinary artist working across painting, photography, installation and video. The exhibition features new paintings in oil and acrylic and mixed media, portraying images of women, using traditional icons and patterns but embedded in a contemporary vision, exploring the timelessness of the female figure.


 


The centerpiece this year of FotoFest 2014, a photography biennial based in Houston is “View From Inside: Contemporary Arab Video, Photography and Mixed Media”, curated by Karin Adrian von Roques, and showcasing to an American audience, 49 prominent artists from the Middle East, including our artist Camille Zakharia, a Lebanese photographer, researcher and mixed-media practitioner. The biennial runs from the 15th of March through the 27th of April. 


 


The Nasser Al Yousif Printmaking Studio resumed activities with a three-day workshop, “Sparrow Nest”, introducing the audience to a complex and delicate technique, the intaglio printmaking. The workshop was hosted by Dr. Salah El Meligy, an Egyptian artist with a distinguish career as a printmaker and also as a cultural administrator in the public sector in Egypt. The workshop was held between the 23rd and the 25th of March at our studio. 


 


A new, groundbreaking exhibition of Bahraini artists, “Media Lab”, will open at the gallery on the 27th of April and will run through the 8th of May. The participants in the show, all of them young artists without prior experience with digital media, were introduced to the format through a combination of artistic concept with sound and image. Ten beautiful short video pieces will be showcased at the opening via two wide screen monitors.
 
Participant artists are Zuhair Al Saeed, Abdulla Naji, Tamara Al Pachachi, Jehan Saleh, Maryam Noaimi, Marwa Al Khalifa, Linda Mattar, Somaya AbdulGhani, Mohammed Saleh and Dalal AlKhuzai. This exhibition is part of the second edition of the ALP program which Albareh pioneered last year and led in this opportunity to renowned artist Nedim Kufi. The show will also feature art books that were created in an earlier workshop titled “The Concept of a Handbook”.
 
The ALP (Artist Leadership Programme) is a non-profit framework that aims to develop and support the practice of artists in Bahrain through mentorships and exchanges with foreign artists. The route offered by the program is composed of several on-going workshops, aimed to train participants in developing their professional skills, enabling to broaden their knowledge of contemporary practices both in the region and in a global context.
 
This program was made possible with the support of the EDB and Tamkeen of Bahrain. 

 

View the online newsletter here