Beirut Art Fair: round 3 – from 5 to 8 July 2012

[03 Jul 2012]

 

The Lebanese capital has given itself many opportunities to establish itself as a cultural capital since 2009, when the 1st ever Lebanese Contemporary Art Center, the Beirut Art Center, opened in an industrial wasteland. A few months later the Beirut Exhibition Center opened its doors on the city’s first Modern & Contemporary art fair, organised by Laure d’Hauteville.
For the third edition of the Beirut Art Fair, the BIEL (Beirut International Exhibition & Leisure Center) has invited approximately 40 galleries (versus 25 in 2011) with a selection of Modern and Contemporary works that are on the whole works created by artists from the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia (ME NA and SA)… i.e. from Morocco to Indonesia. Artists that have never (or rarely) been to auction (like Rozita Sharafjahan, Rashid Al Khalifa, Rana Raouda Mustapha Azeroual and Rifat Chadirji) will be presented alongside young signatures that are already coveted like Ayman BAALBAKI and Mohamed EL BAZ who both scored their auction records on April 19, 2011 at Christie’s in Dubai: the first exceeding his high estimate by $100,000 with a hammer price of $170,000 for a canvas entitled Let A Thousand Flowers Bloom, and the second with a result of $32,000 for Double Like, a light installation appropriating traditional carpets.

The ninth art in the spotlight
The Beirut Art Fair features a focus on comics, a well-chosen orientation at a time when this market niche is rapidly gaining in visibility with a fresh record this June for a drawing by Hergé (€1.1m or $1.37m at Artcurial Paris, June 2, 2012) and the first auction of comic books at Sotheby’s Paris on 4 July 2012 (the day before the public opening of Beirut Art Fair). Far from the habitual signatures usually present at auctions (Moebius, Hergé, Crecy and Minus), the Beirut fair has expanded the horizons by presenting artists whose work may described as “committed” from the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, like Zeina Abirached, Mazen Kerbaj, Jorj Mhaya (Lebanon), Khiari Nadia (Tunisia) and Mohamed El Sharkawi (Egypt).

Reflecting the breadth and dynamism of the artistic and economic growth of the ME NA and SA regions, this year’s fair includes monumental sculpture, videos, street art and design.

The galleries at the Beirut Art Fair 2012
29 Middle Eastern galleries

20-21 Gallery (Lebanon)
Art Bahrain (Bahrain)
The Gallery Art Chowk (Pakistan and Dubai)
Art Gallery Factum (Lebanon)
Agial Art Gallery (Lebanon)
Art Sawa (Dubai)
ATHR (Saudi Arabia)
Ayyam (Lebanon / UAE / Syria)
Azad Art Gallery (Iran)
Carwan Gallery (Lebanon)
Emmagoss Art Gallery (Lebanon)
Space-Kettaneh Kunigk Tanit (Lebanon and Germany)
Sketch Gallery (Lebanon)
Al Motharaf Gallery (Saudi Arabia)
Artist Proof Gallery (Lebanon)
Janine Rubeiz Gallery (Lebanon)
Ghassan Zard Abou Jaoude Gallery (Lebanon)
Joanna Seikaly Art Gallery (Lebanon)
Karim Bekdache (Lebanon)
Art Gallery Kozah (Syria)
Design Halios Maria (Lebanon)
Smogallery (Lebanon)
Spare Arts Gallery (Lebanon)
Raja ‘Art Gallery Sertin Nehme (Lebanon)
Ramy Boutros Design
Tajalliydt Art Gallery (Syria)
Tashkeel (Dubai)
The Running Horse (Lebanon)
Waddah Faris (Iraq)

7 European galleries

ABK ART (France)
ChinaToday Gallery (Belgium)
Prinzessin Michaela Nikolajewna Wolkonsky Gallery (Germany)
Sophie Lanoë Gallery (France)
Galeria Sabrina Amrani (Spain)
Gallery Black line – Aroya (France)
VDA Galleries (Spain)

3 North African galleries

Le Violon Bleu Gallery (Tunisia)
The Sous Sol Art Gallery (Morocco)
The Musk & Amber lifestyle concept store (Tunisia)