50 art galleries to exhibit at Beirut fair
Beirut, June 30, 2014
More than fifty international modern and contemporary art and design galleries will showcase their work at a fair in Beirut in September.
The fifth edition of the Beirut Art Fair will run from September 18 to 21 at the Beirut International Exhibition Leisure Center.
The exhibiting artists will represent all the trends of modern and contemporary art and express themselves through painting, drawing, sculpture, video, design or performance.
“When we’re asked about the reasons for which we embarked on Beirut Art Fair adventure, we answer that our motivation is to build bridges between cultures, between the Middle East, Europe and Asia. Our passion is to promote an interplanetary dialogue which is mainly based on art,” said Laure d’Hauteville, founder and director of the fair.
“The 2014 edition of Beirut Art Fair will reflect the wonderful dynamic inspired by Beirut, this unrivalled city which attracts avant-gardes, creates a ferment of ideas and encounters and remains, irrespective of the geopolitical context, a forum open to the outside world, to the future and to all cultures,” she said.
“Our approach, which consists in opening up to all contemporary artistic practices, is the main thread of the cultural program that we propose every year.This year, BEIRUT ART FAIR opens a new bridge towards the contemporary creation in the ME.NA.SA. region by inviting contemporary Indian artists,” said Pascal Odille, artistic director.
The Indian pavilion ‘Small Art is Beautiful – Dharma’ curated by Fabrice Bousteau, an art critic an independent crurator, will put in the forefront small format works revolving around the theme of the Dharma wheel.
“The exhibition presents, through a selection of small format works, the transformations of an artistic scene which is constantly growing, changing and evolving, expressive and lively, strong and fragile, active particle and constituent power of the world of contemporary art at the same time,” said Bousteau.
The event will also host an engraving workshop where visitors can learn this artistic practice. It is based on an idea by Fadi Mogabgab, a gallerist, who has been presenting and digging for talents for a long time.
The Byblos Bank is supporting Photography, as part of its broader mission to revive culture and arts in Lebanon. This commitment, which is an essential part of the bank’s corpo¬rate social responsibility, aims at helping emerging Lebanese photographers sharpen their skills and widen the scope of their exposure.
It will also present the BLC Bank Design platform which is dedicated to Lebanese and international designers, with the participation of another curator and art critic Jérôme Sans who is invited to visit this platform and share his “crushes”.
The ‘video projects’ with the ‘Body Politics’ programme curated by Silke Schmickl allows discovering the various ME.NA.SA. trends of the video art.
Beirut Art Week 2014, which follows the success of the opening edition last year, will feature monumental works displayed on the streets and in the shops in downtown Beirut from September 17 to 24. - TradeArabia News Service
