For the third consecutive year, Sotheby’s is holding another Contemporary Art auction in Doha featuring works by leading Arab, Iranian and international contemporary artists.
During its last auction which was held at Katara in October, Sotheby’s sold 53 lots for a total of $8,006,625 and set 13 records.
The pieces which will go under the hammer on April 21 comprise an eclectic mix of paintings, installation art, photography and sculpture by today’s top caliber artists.
After the great acclaim achieved during last year’s auction, Anish Kapoor, whose Untitled emerged the top lot at the sale setting the highest price for the artist in the Middle East, will be back with another work from the artist’s pixelated disk series.
With an estimated price of $800,000/1.2m, Kapoor’s Untitled instantly enshrouds the viewer into its welcoming, yet slightly disconcerting, infinite space with the concave form capturing the eternally changing natural world within its fixed, artificial grasp.
The sale will also feature a bold, graphic Christopher Wool work. Created between 1986-1987, Untitled is one of the artist’s earliest, most desirable and sought-after pattern paintings made using paint rollers incised with floral designs that are transferred onto an aluminium canvas (est. $1/1.5m). The severe black enamel pattern against the white ground collapses any distinction between the physical process of making the work and its visual context. These everyday tools provided Wool with a repertoire of ready-made imagery, and the small inconsistencies created during the process convey a delicate, yet powerfully emotional resonance.
A further highlight of the sale is El Anatsui’s Introvert, a found aluminium and copper wire installation which, like so much of the artist’s work, addresses a range of social, political and historical topics (est. $700,000/1m). Introvert exemplifies Anatsui’s signatory method of artistic production coupled with his principle ideology of reassigning purpose to waste material in order to recount the rich heritage of the region. Transforming found objects into fine art, Anatsui’s cloths cause the observer to examine their preconceptions of waste material, its relationship to beauty, and how art cannot be confined to strict definitions.
Internationally acclaimed and highly sought-after artist Ali Banisadr’s work is heavily influenced by his childhood experiences as a refugee of the Iran-Iraq war. The large-scale fantastical abstract landscapes that dominate the work convey something of the chaotic violence he witnessed as a child. Drawing on both Eastern and Western artistic traditions, Banisadr’s work recalls both the startling complexity of Persian miniatures and the wide-ranging landscapes of the Flemish Old Masters. The Shrines from 2011 ($100/150,000) appears at auction just six months after Sotheby’s set an auction record for the artist in Doha for The Chase.
Chant Avedissian’s Icons of the Nile, 2010, (in 21 parts) is another highly important installation work by the Egyptian artist which has many similarities to Icons of the Nile which set the artist record at Sotheby’s Doha in April 2013 (est. $150/200,000). Avedissian’s remarkable use of stencils is the result of more than twenty years of research during his extensive travels. The astounding installation creates a mosaic of Egyptian culture that retraces his country’s past, combining nostalgic imagery with a celebration of Egyptian iconographical motifs.
Ayman Baalbaki is another artist whose auction benchmark was set at Sotheby’s Doha last year. This season the sale includes Al-Mulatham from 2009 which, like many of the artist’s major works depicts the shrouded face of a lone, heroic figure gazing up to the skies (est. $80/120,000). The work is dominated by the traditional red and white kaffiyeh headdress, a garment worn by men throughout the Arab world as protection against sun exposure and sandstorms; Baalbaki’s monumental portrait evokes a broad spectrum of interpretations and responses ranging from the political to the emotional.
Untitled from 1981 is a rare and early peau relief by Farid Belkahia, Morocco’s foremost artist (est. $40/60,000). Made up of parchments stretched into organic shapes and adorned with magical symbols and rituals, Untitled is the truest embodiment of the visual lexicon of a post-colonial celebration of Morocco’s cultural authenticity. Belkahia’s oeuvre is stripped of Western lineage, and fiercely engrained in the artist’s passion for the taxonomy of symbols, sculptural materiality, and a gentle sensuality that could not better epitomize the Maghreb’s telluric mysticism.
I’ve got Sunshine by Farhad Moshiri is made up of dozens of found knives dug into a thick and creamy canary canvas (est. $120/180,000). It is a striking example of the artist’s interest in the Baroque and Mannerist movement, which has often brought the artist comparisons to Jeff Koons. Moshiri’s subversive socio-political narrative has positioned him at the forefront of Contemporary Iranian art and the present work lives up to the duality between Iranian and western cultures.
The pieces are on display at The DIFC Atrium, Level 2, Gate Building 5 in Dubai until tomorrow.
The Peninsula
