ArtNews
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About Nasr Warour
Born in 1968 in Syria, Nasr Warour holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Damascus University; he also studied at the fine art institute in Swaida, Syria. Nasr’s interests comprise art, sculpture and literature. He started with sculpture before dedicating himself to painting. This talented artist also writes poetry in Arabic and often weaves it into his works.
He has been participating to art shows since 1986. Nasr's work has been exhibited in forums and galleries in Syria and abroad, notably in Dubai, Lebanon and New Delhi. He participated recently to several joint exhibitions in Dubai and Bahrain. In 2009, he won the fourth award of Lorenzo il Magnifico in the Seventh Edition of Florence Biennale of Contemporary Art 2009.
Since 2000, the artist lives and works in Dubai.
The Laureates
of the International Print Triennial Krakow
Poland 2009
Guntars Sietins
Yvonne Pagh
Varuslava Severova
Deena des Rieux
Darina Peeva
Olena Gaidamaka
Mary Shina
Durski Teodor
Nobuko Hamano
Wayne Crothers
Zbigniew Lutomski
Olga Palka Slaska
Marta Pogorzelec
Modhir Ahmed
Sandy Sykes
Joanna Piech
Mersad Berber
Tadeusz Myslovski
Grzegorz Handerek
Katarzyna Dziuba
November 2010
Nasr Warour
“The Dust between’’
Solo Exhibition
Albareh Art Gallery
7-26 November 2010
NASR WAROUR's repertoire is formed by abstract creations fused with figurative elements. He uses cubist techniques and his images feature bold, bright colors alternating with dark grey and black shapes. In his latest body of work, ''South Passage'', Nasr's artworks expressed an ''overlooking point of contact between the corpus and the cosmic, the object and the environment, the being and the belonging''.
The experiment's subject was then to search for the relationship between oneself and the space, through the vertical line built as the intersection of the human body with the ground on the feet level. In this new series entitled ''Pollen Overwhelmed'' the artist focuses on the hands as the reference point… This representation of the hands differs by its horizontal equation. In these paintings the focus is held on the empty space or on the limits of the human shapes defined as ''pollen'', resulting from the dialogue between the object and its representation. According to the artist, this ''pollen'' can't be confined and it flees beyond things as a floating perfume. This overwhelming pollen is the human reality laid on the margins of ourselves.
Artist's Statement
The space takes its importance and identity from us as part of the universe in permanent movement and change in its shape, sound, smell, weight, temperature and rhythm. By space, I don't mean its physical state but the words and expressions emanate from the self within its
surroundings. Words and expressions which can fly and fill the hollowness that's scattered far and wide. Or simply plummet like a dead sperm unable to swim and reach anywhere. Or they could find themselves submerged and infused into the light and in the flowing equations that
lie between us. Or they can just be kept imprisoned in their extremism. These expressions - fragrances that never surrender or yield - wander endlessly by the effect of the deeds in our margins and await neither a bee effect nor a storm.
Laureates
of the International Print Triennial Krakow
Poland 2009
Dalarnas Museum
20 november -
16 januari
STARS OF International Print Triennial shine under the sky of Sweden. Dalarnas museum in Falun exhibit the works of laureates of International Print Triennial – Kraków 2009 and Grand Prix of Young Polish Print – crčme de la crčme of contemporary print.
The works of traditional and avant-garde artists as well as the works of young Polish print artists create dense and vibrating art space. It reflects the picture of complicated, dynamic world for a contemporary man. Paradoxically, due to creative anxiety, the print is alive and Triennial breathes its rhythm. Triennial (former name – Biennial) exists since 60’s of the 20th c. and since the first edition in 1966 Kraków became an important print centre.
The most famous avant-garde artists sent their works to the competition. Its open form allowed for print experiments. Kraków for many years presented combination of print and photo, print installations as well as digital prints. In the convention of mixed technique many unique works of big format which exceed the stiff frames of the canon came into being.
Triennial of 21st c. has a rich programme of exhibitions in museums and galleries in Kraków and all over Poland. The unique programme International Print Network Kraków – Oldenburg - Vienna enables organization of big print exhibitions in Poland, Germany and Austria.
Chosen by Jury Award from the thousand of works, the prints will face another attentive recipient. Dalarnas museum interior presents the deep tone of works and a cameral character of precise exhibition which present the workshop advantages and the concept – the first artist’s thought.
The idea of the exhibition is the print art which break the borders by a beautiful dream realised by Professor Witold Skulicz. Among the laureates of International Print Triennial – Kraków 2009 are the artists of exquisite, classic print workshop as Mersad Berber from Croatia, who was awarded Grand Prix d’Honneur and Polish artist Joanna Piech, a laureate of Grand Prix MTG – Kraków 2009.
On the opposite pole there are experiences of young Polish print artists who look for their own way like Mateusz Dabrowski, a laureate of Grand Prix of Young Polish Print – Kraków 2009, whose works were based on lenticular print.
Monika Wanyura-Kurosad
Curator
About Dalarnas Museum
THE HUB OF DALARNA'S CULTURE
Dalarna’s cultural history – its art and its crafts, its trade and its industry. The collection of traditional Dalarna folk costume, the textiles, the folk music and the typical, traditional peasant paintings. The graphic art gallery (see p.18), Selma Lagerlöf’s study and the art gallery. The collections of artefacts and photographs, the archives of recordings and press cuttings.....
Dalarnas museum is a comprehensive museum and acts as a natural meeting place for those who live in or come to Dalarna. Through the permanent and temporary exhibitions, the visitor is able to study both by-gone times and what is going on today. As the central museum of the province, the museum is responsible for archaeological investigations in Dalarna; inventories are made of the cultural landscape, settlements and buildings and the museum supplies information on how objects of cultural value may best be preserved.
The museum was opened in 1962 and, from the very beginning, was both innovative and different. Much has happened and still happens within its walls. Over the years, Dalarnas museum has made a name for itself as an exciting and lively institution. Not for nothing is this the only provincial museum in Sweden to have been awarded three stars in the Guide Michelin.
About 120,000 visitors come to the museum every year. The number of exhibits on display today amounts to approximately 60,000.
Among other treasures, Dalarnas museum houses one of the finest collections of peasant costume and art in Sweden.
www.dalarnasmuseum.se
ABOUT SMTG KRAKÓW
International Print Triennial Society (Stowarzyszenie Miedzynarodowe Triennale Grafiki, SMTG) was established in the year 1992 to continue the organisation of International Print Biennial in Krakow, an event whose history reaches back to the year 1966. The SMTG changed the frequency of the event, transforming at the same time its name to International Print Triennial (SMTG) in Krakow.
At the same time SMTG expanded the organisational formula of the event, developing in other Polish cities a range of regular events that are organised as part of the SMTG - Krakow programme.
SMTG is a registered institution, with legal personality, permanent bureau and a storage premises for the works. Members of the Society are both artists and friends and connoisseurs of contemporary print from many countries. The Society enjoys two types of membership: honorary and artistic. Any person who submits a written membership application, completing and signing the declaration of participation may become a member of SMTG.
www.triennial.cracow.pl/
Aissa H Deebi
FLYWAY
Albareh Café, Bahrain
23 November- 9 December
About the Artist
Aissa Deebi is a Palestinian - American artist (born in Shatat, 1970). He has produced a body of work in photography, video, new media and graphic arts. He is currently a assistant professor in graphic arts at The American University in Cairo, Performing and Visual Arts Department. Aissa is conducting a PhD research in Art and Design at the University of Southampton, examining photography and migration within the New York City émigré culture, investigating questions of identity in relation to masculinity and cultural integration.
An award winning artist Aissa’s work has been widely exhibited in the United States. He has exhibited at the Queens Museum of Art, the Elga Wimmer Gallery in Chelsea, the Tangent Gallery in Detroit, and the Slought Foundation in Philadelphia. He has also exhibited at the Fitcher and Mezrahi Gallery in Austria. In addition, to the University of Catania in Italy, and the Inner Mongolia Museum of Fine Arts in China, and the Virginia Commonwealth University Gallery in Qatar (VCU).
Aissa is residing between Cairo and New York, and he is a practicing artist/ researcher and a lecturer in graphic arts.
http://www.aissadeebi.info
About the Curator
Aida Eltorie (born Cairo, 1983), is an independent cultural producer and director to a newfound organization: Finding Projects.Org. Curating the film program of Manifesta 8, under the curatorial auspices of The Chamber of Public Secrets, and the first video art biennial in the Middle East: CAVE, Eltorie was also the Editor-in-Chief of Contemporary Practices Journal: Volumes 4, 5, and 6, and has worked with a myriad of galleries, museums and cultural agencies in Cairo, New York and San Francisco. She has worked with The Townhouse Gallery of contemporary art, The Brooklyn Museum, The International Museum of Women, Christie's auction house (New York), and independently produced a number of international projects with artists and cultural practitioners from the Middle East and Europe, with the support of ProHelvetia Swiss Arts Council, The Ford Foundation and The American Center Foundation. She is completing her Masters degree in Islamic Art and Architecture from the American University in Cairo.
www.findingprojects.org
About Albareh Art Gallery
Established in 1998 with the primary objective to celebrate a diverse talent prevalent in Bahrain’s visual arts scene, Albareh Gallery has become a center for dynamic visual expression throughout the Kingdom and further a field. Over the past decade Albareh Art Gallery has built a formidable platform of artists, both established and emerging, encouraging a variety of fresh perspectives from the region. Driven by a body of local artists who have established themselves in the realm of painting, there are a great number of artists seeking to develop their interests in new media, film and installation and do not have the means to progress in their locales.
Hosting workshops, lectures and panel discussions in two exhibition halls, the gallery
showcases paintings, sculptures, and contemporary installations by artists from
the region, and seeks the support of a beneficent foundation to offer support and
increase the visibility and depth of opportunities that can be made both for the artists in the Gulf, as well as collaborative projects with artists from Palestine, Cairo, Berlin, Amsterdam, Zurich and more.
www.albareh.com
This project has been recognized under the auspices of The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (Amman, Jordan), The Qattan Foundation (London, UK/Ramallah, Palestine), and handled by Finding Projects.Org (Rome, Italy/Cairo, Egypt)
During the last five years, Aissa Deebi conducted a visual, theoretical and historical research dealing with issues of migration and displacement. In the process, he visited many bird migration scopes in New York, London, Haifa and Mexico, and found that human migration is embodied in nature and links back to primitive, basic needs of social mobility. As an Arab of Palestinian descent, he wanted to understand his position about the Arab history of nomadic life using personal experiences learned.
The starting point of the FLYWAY Project was focused on the crucial point between departure and arrival, whereby you have no return. You make the choice to leave and this is the point where migration starts; where you take-off and keep going through that journey without return. This is what interested Deebi the most: That moment of departure was final and absolute.
"In the last 20 years of my life, I have been living a lifestyle that starts between 2 points and ends between those same two points. Those two points are very crucial in my work - whereby there is a beginning and an end, and it changed my perception in art. Everything had to fit in that suitcase. Everything was temporary and nothing was permanent, because there is a production period that terminates, and you must then start all over again. The only physical evidence of my practice is the carrying of my mobile studio, which changed the way of producing work. Something that many artists do today is work as a post-studio artist, and my space is my laptop."
FLYWAY is an outcome of multiple journeys’ that start and end between those two destinations, and Deebi's work comes out of the mapping of the act of mobility. The border between the "self" and "Other" are removed.
When Deebi obsessively starts thinking about nature, and how mobility is embodied in nature almost as a natural habit, his interest in social behaviors that represent a set of social metaphors are embodied into a typeface - that typeface then returns to the image by becoming the written word that dictates the artwork. The visual diary goes through an abstraction of its meanings by emphasizing birds as metaphors.
Diaspora as Myth
Quoted from one of Deebi's case studies; "You stay an immigrant until the moment you die, because assimilation is only a myth. The idea of becoming an American and becoming part of a melting pot in a mosaic society, you do not become fully integrated into this experience because integration from a diasporic culture only exists in its myth. You have to prove for the rest of your life that you are a social assimilation.
Proven by an absolute reality in sets of cultural codes, that Deebi himself could not deal with on an ethical, social and political standpoint, his extremist idea for the concept of Diaspora - the process of nothingness - is made out a set of codes that need to be assimilated, however they will never merge because the assimilation is non-existent.
Assimilation is the point of departure to the point of arrival, the point of making a decision on whether you as a culture will become fully integrated into the greater system of the newfound society, or choose not to assimilate whereby Diaspora becomes the counter of assimilation. Diaspora then becomes the mythical choice.
To those who assimilate, are those who migrate and become fully integrated. The familiar and the unfamiliar become one, and through such sets of compositions come their transformations from oral interviews with immigrants. Creating Exile1, Exile2 and Exile3, come three typeface images of an abstract language of Diaspora. Social codes start to formulate from ideas, animal behaviors and social studies become a language only known to Deebi: The language of migration.
Diaspora as Language
The pieces are a pattern of mapping - and those maps, not paintings or photo-prints, but a representation of moments in migration. Like a photo of migrating birds, this photo will never come back. A momento of movement to create an artwork, and all the work is about the tension between these two points.
Returning to nature, Aissa uses it as a place where you can merge between theory and practice, science and fantasy, dreams and reality. He was fascinated by the behavior of migratory birds, as a group of travelers with a leader. They would move from one place to another in a cycle, almost creating a performance of patterns. Through this experience of traveling and waiting for a wave of immigrant birds came a sublime collective of visuals, sounds and social behavior that he captured with thousands of photographs. By visiting many locations, following the news on BBC, and surfing the web about bird migration schedules and locations, he found a massive amount of information that fed into his research.
FLYWAY is a concept for a new body of work that deals with new aspects of cultural anthropology, design, typography and image-making.
“I started my career as a designer/calligrapher in my-home city in Palestine; I made hundreds of signs, symbols and protest art. After 10 years of conceptual photography, video and installation, I discovered myself as a multi media artist dealing with many new forms of visual dialogue.”