Perception and Interpretation: Major Themes of “Galleries Night 2019”
Abstract art was a major theme in the opening exhibition of the Art Week, “Galleries Night” at Alserkal Avenue last week.
The collection titled “The Chaser, the Ambusher and the Fickle” by Bernhard Buhmann drew the crowd’s attention for the works’ calculated geometric shapes and gradients of color.
Buhmann, 40, is an Austrian contemporary painter whose work mainly focuses on questioning the (re)construction of identity. He has showcased his work in the U.A.E., the U.S., Austria and Germany.
His pieces in the 2019 Dubai Art Week combined antiquity with modernity. “I got the idea from a portrait gallery from the 19th century and that is why they all look like heads,” Buhmann told the MBRSC Post. His idea was also derived from the PacMan game. “In the original version, they had the names of the ghosts, but in the international version, they were named by color… I wanted to add new characters to the game.”
Buhmann’s concept was “to reflect contemporary society.”
“Each of us can see different things like faces or industrial objects,” Leva Balciunaite, 34, creative director at CreateYou LLE, told the MBRSC Post.
El Seed’s most famous work, “Perception,” is a mural painted on many buildings in Egypt that overlap, creating one cohesive painting when looked at from a certain angle. His concept is to highlight the misconceptions a society can have about a community based on their differences.
“The Manshiyat Nasr community in Cairo developed the most powerful recycling system in the world, but because the location is associated with trash, people segregate and marginalize them, so that what the point of the ‘Perception’,” El Seed told the MBRSC Post.
The artwork presented at Alserkal’s Galleries Night will also be showcased at “Carbon 12” gallery.
