< Previous70 HarpersBazaarArabia.com/culture/art Spring 2020 GALLERY The ituated in the Principality of Monaco in Monte-Carlo, the newly launched Galerie Maria Behnam-Bakhtiar is set to house its second exhibition entitled Conveyance of Joy by famed French abstract expressionist Marie- Cécile Aptel. The eponymous gallery, founded by Maria Behnam-Bakhtiar – who has been part of the international art scene since 2009 – is also set to participate in this year’s edition of Monaco Art Week. “Since our launch in December last year we have become an active player in Monaco’s exciting art scene, delighted by the warm welcome we received from the residents of the principality,” says Behnam- Bakhtiar. The space is located steps away from Nouveau Musée National de Monaco and the Grimaldi Forum, which houses the yearly prominent artmonte-carlo fair. On view from 26 March until 22 May 2020, Conveyance of Joy will see a selection of large-scale abstract works spanning over 15 years of Aptel’s practice, marking the artist’s fi rst show in the Principality of Monaco. “The works are united by a defi nite emotion the artist felt at the time of their creation – an intense joy, either spontaneous or experienced as a result of a conscious pursuit in challenging darker times,” explains Behnam-Bakhtiar. “The scale of works is all-enveloping, emanating the spirit of exultation throughout the space and onto the viewer. They are a wonderful fi nd for anyone looking to infuse some pulsating energy into their surroundings.” Comprising vivid colours and deep lines, the works are the embodiment of “quintessentially French joie de vivre,” as Behnam- Bakhtiar describes. “Evidently multi-layered, but light handed and free, the works often feature deliberately childlike details, adding unrestrained sensibility to Aptel’s canvases.” she says. Several featured works recall classroom blackboards with free-fl owing scribbles, a testament to innocence, mischievous behaviour and freedom of the inner self. To avoid restrictions that are often placed by labels, the works are all left untitled to enable a direct, intimate dialogue between the artwork and viewer, “leaving interpretation to the latter.” Aptel has exhibited internationally and her works have been included in a number of signifi cant public and private art collections HBA_038_68-71_The Gallery_Maria Bahnam_11236351.indd 7011/03/2020 12:26:16 PM71 HarpersBazaarArabia.com/culture/art Spring 2020 Images b y L oic T hebaud. C ourt es y of G alerie Maria Behnam-Bakhtiar such as the Mairie of Paris, EDF Foundation, FRAC Haute- Normandie, and Jean-Jacques Lesgourgues (Quasar Collection). The artist also had a very successful collaboration with renowned French luxury fabric house Pierre Frey, initiated by the company’s president and creative director Patrick Frey when he reproduced one of Aptel’s paintings from his collection on a linen fabric. Entitled Arty, the fabric rapidly became an iconic design of the house and a renowned creation in the world of design. Galerie Maria Behnam-Bakhtiar’s very fi rst exhibition, Human Being, Being Human, by Los Angeles-based artist Farzad Kohan, launched 6 December last year, exploring themes of humanity, love and kindness. Aside from the scheduled programming, the gallery serves as a platform to inspire perpetual positive change in society through art and is a beacon of the importance of social responsibility. A portion of the proceeds from every exhibition held within the space contributes to selected organisations such as AMADE (Association Mondiale des Amis de L’Enfance) and MAP (Monaco Aide et Presence). Ultimately, Galerie Maria Behnam-Bakhtiar focuses on contemporary and modern art, with an emphasis on the aesthetic signifi cance of the works, while the philanthropic benefi ts gained from their sales contribute to a better world. In future, the space will see a range of exhibitions by artists from around the world, established and emerging. “We are planning an array of exciting exhibitions with artists that we source all over the globe, many of whom will make history by representing the artistic voice of their native country for the fi rst time in the Principality of Monaco,” says Behnam-Bakhtiar. Conveyance of Joy by Marie-Cécile Aptel is on view from 26 March until 22 May 2020 at Galerie Maria Behnam- Bakhtiar, Monte-Carlo, Principality of Monaco mariabehnambakhtiar. com Clockwise from left: Maria Behnam-Bakhtiar; Marie- Cécile Aptel. Untitled. 2017. (Recto/Verso) 186x 134cm. Acrylic and Oil Sticks on Canvas; Untitled. 2006. Acrylic on Canvas. 215,5x225,5cm; Facing page: Marie- Cécile Aptel. Untitled. 2013. Acrylic on canvas. 150x150cm HBA_038_68-71_The Gallery_Maria Bahnam_11236351.indd 7111/03/2020 12:26:24 PM72 HarpersBazaarArabia.com/culture/art Spring 2020 HBA_038_72-75_La photographie_Youssef Nabil_11220102.indd 7211/03/2020 12:31:19 PM73 HarpersBazaarArabia.com/culture/art Spring 2020 Facing page: Youssef Nabil. Isabelle Huppert, Paris. 2012. Hand coloured gelatin silver print. This page: Youssef Nabil. The Last Dance # I, Denver. 2012 Hand colored gelatin silver print. Courtesy of the Artist and Nathalie Obadia Gallery, Paris/Brussels; Above: The Last Dance # I, Denver. 2012. Hand coloured gelatin silver print Courtesy of the artist, Pinault Collection The timeless moments captured and hand-painted by Egyptian artist Youssef Nabil are a narration of a melancholic past and a hopeful future. Ayesha Shehmir discovers the messages relayed through the evocative works featured at his latest exhibition in Venice’s Palazzo Grassi La PHOTOGRAPHIE REALITIES DISTANT HBA_038_72-75_La photographie_Youssef Nabil_11220102.indd 7311/03/2020 12:31:27 PM74 HarpersBazaarArabia.com/culture/art Spring 2020 From top: Youssef Nabil. Say Goodbye, Self Portrait, Alexandria. 2009. Hand coloured gelatin silver print. Courtesy of the artist. Pinault Collection; Self Portrait with Botticelli, Florence. 2009. Hand coloured gelatin silver print Courtesy of the artist. Pinault Collection ew York and Paris-based Youssef Nabil’s journey of becoming the famed multifaceted artist he is today, was not a seamless one. He didn’t study art in his hometown Egypt and he wasn’t accepted into any art school for two years in a row. “It was a traumatic experience because the only thing I wanted to do in life was art – I wanted to work with images, create artworks and fi lms,” expresses Nabil. “I studied French literature because I enjoyed reading as it was the closest thing to my area of interest.” In the early nineties, Nabil began photographing his family and friends, noting inspiration from cinema, to which he was drawn to from a very young age. “I was in love with this art form of fi lms and cinema,” he shares. He spent most of his teenage years and early twenties watching and studying different forms of fi lm and cinema. “Cinema is important in Egypt and was mainly the most important one in the Arab world at the time,” recalls Nabil. “I used to photograph my friends in scenarios that I wrote, telling them what to wear, how to act and [I would] create stories using only black and white fi lms that I would shoot.” He did, however, have a strong need to see his work in colour. “But I didn’t want to use colour fi lm,” he admits. He began painting the black and white photographs by hand, a technique the artist has become known for around the world. This same technique was practiced in Cairo and Alexandria since the early 1900’s and is HBA_038_72-75_La photographie_Youssef Nabil_11220102.indd 7411/03/2020 12:31:37 PM75 HarpersBazaarArabia.com/culture/art Spring 2020 La PHOTOGRAPHIE celebrated as one of the oldest techniques of painting. Entitled Once Upon a Dream, Nabil’s most recent exhibition, housed within Palazzo Grassi in Venice, Italy, and on view until January next year, will unveil the fi rst major survey of the artist. The show covers Nabil’s work since the early nineties to date, spanning three fi lms, self-portraits, paint- ing, installation art and other recent projects. Curated by Matthieu Hum- ery and Jean-Jacques Aillagon, the show has united over 120 works tracing the entirety of Nabil’s work. The photographs on view, for instance Self- portrait, Hawaii (2013) and Say goodbye, Self Portrait, Alexandria (2009) depict a narrative of hope, a distant reality and the troubles faced by the Middle East in a modern age. “I don’t believe there’s only one message,” says Nabil. “I’m showing my life through my work, directly inspired by what I had gone through in my life in Egypt until the age of 30.” The artist moved out from home almost two decades ago in 2003 and found himself in Paris, before moving to New York. “I was inspired by cinema and all the work I was doing – my portraits of people including actors, writers, friends or even people I just met – so there’s a story in each portrait, a cinematic theme.” A highlight of the exhibition is I Saved my Belly Dancer # XXIV (2015), comprising hand-coloured gelatin silver print, which portrays a message of freedom. “To let a woman choose to belly dance if she wants to, for me is a good indication of freedom in society,” expresses Nabil. “But they are Above: Youssef Nabil. Self Portrait with Roots, Los Angeles. 2008 Hand coloured gelatin silver print; Right: Your Life was just a Dream. 2019. Courtesy of the artist treated as a kind of minority because they are typically considered not to be from a good family. I wanted to defend that idea and when I say that ‘I saved it’, I saved it in my memory. The fi lm is more about what you can save in your memory even if it’s no longer part of your reality – it could be belly dancers, it could be someone you loved who is no longer part of your life. When you decide to save an idea in your memory, you carry it with you everywhere you go. That’s the main message I want people to feel when they see the fi lm.” Produced fi ve years ago, the fi lm stars actors Salma Hayek and Tahar Rahim. Egyptian fi lm actors of the fi fties by the likes of Faten Hamama, Shadia and Omar Sharif have been a vast source of inspi- ration for Nabil. Another fi lm of note at the exhibition is You Never Left (2010), the fi rst video by Nabil which features French actors Fanny Ardant and Tahar Rahim, depicting the intimate relationship between exile and death, and the feelings associated with leaving one’s home. The fi lm is set in a place which acts as a metaphor of a ‘lost Egypt’. “I wanted to talk about how I felt when I decided to leave Egypt – when I decided that I’m not going back and the idea of starting your life somewhere else,” expresses Nabil. “I needed to talk about the relation between leaving home and dying, because that’s what I knew as home and then I was suddenly in a different place. I found myself in a new country and I felt like I had to start my life all over again – new place new people, in a country that I’m still discovering.” He pauses, “your country never really leaves you wherever you go, so you carry your own culture and your own history wherever you go.” Other works showcased at Once Upon a Dream include The Last Dance (2012), I Will Go To Paradise, Self Portrait, Hyères (2008) and In Love, Denver (2012). The interplay of symbolism and abstraction contribute to the authenticity of Nabil’s work, acting as his own personal diary of multiple messages for today’s ever-changing Middle Eastern society. Somewhere in the middle of fi ction and reality, the artist’s thought- provoking works are a narrative thread comprising themes of identity, social and political concerns, and the nostalgia associated with previous times. Once Upon a Dream by Youssef Nabil is on show at Palazzo Grassi from 22 March 2020 until 10 January 2021 HBA_038_72-75_La photographie_Youssef Nabil_11220102.indd 7511/03/2020 12:31:45 PMUAE-raised photographer Farah Al Qasimi ’s ongoing exhibition Back and Forth Disco reveals a colossal understanding of life’s nuances, writes Beena Pagarani Farah Al Qasimi. Woman in Leopard Print. 2019. Photographic work as a part of Back and Forth Disco La PHOTOGRAPHIE DAILY LIVES Beyond HBA_038_76-77_La photographie_ Farah Al Qasimi_11202360.indd 7610/03/2020 05:17:17 PMClockwise from top left: Farah Al Qasimi. 5 Star Barber Shop. 2019. Photographic work as a part of Back and Forth Disco; Woman on Phone, 2019. Photographic work as a part of Back and Forth Disco; Coco. 2019. Photographic work as a part of Back and Forth Disco ince 29 January 2020, 17 recently commissioned photo- graphs under the series Back and Forth Disco have been on display across 100 bus stops around New York City. The artist, Farah Al Qasimi, an Abu Dhabi-born and current resident of both Dubai and Brooklyn, has taken a fresh approach to daily life in New York City and brings about a colossal understanding of life’s nuances. This is her fi rst institu- tional solo exhibit in Gotham City, focusing primarily on immigrant neighborhoods that resonate with her own expe- rience. She photographs local communities where small busi- nesses thrive. That does not, however, limit her art. Some of her pieces, for instance, Woman on Phone (2019), focuses on the brightness of colours shown; the big green hair tie and the stark yellow top. The exhibition, organised by Public Art Fund in New York, in col- laboration with JCDecaux, is their second exhibition together. The intention behind these free exhibits is to bring art across the city to 100 bus shelters, to showcase works at street level and to marry art into culture. As explained by Public Art Fund Assistant Curator, Katerina Stathopoulou, the curator behind Back and Forth Disco, “bus shelters are spaces where commuters have idle time as they wait for the bus. By inserting Al Qasimi’s photographs into the paths of New York City commuters at eye level on bus shelters, we are encouraging viewers to experience the work in an intimate way. The bus shelters – platforms traditionally used for advertising – bring together images of people, street scenes, interiors and surfaces to explore the experience of being an individual in a hyper-stimulating city.” Inspired by her birth place, Al Qasimi’s work includes bold colours and rich fabrics. Her subjects include people from her intimate and unknown realm, both friends and strangers. Al Qasimi strikingly elab- orates some of life’s daily rituals, ones that are usually not paid much attention to. One, for example, is the photograph titled Coco (2019), wherein “a young boy looks at the bird but his eyes are hidden by his mother’s extended arm, allowing other features – such as the woman’s bright red nails – to become the focal point,” says Stathopoulou. Another example, is 5 Star Barber Shop (2019), where you can see into the world of a barber and his customer, one getting his hair styled and the other, doing his daily work. Or the photograph titled East Broad- way Mall (2019), inspired by the many malls in United Arab Emirates’ capital, is a distant shot of a woman by a counter, amidst the product chaos that is around her. The artist’s photographs, as Stathopoulou says, “celebrate acts of adornment in the way people choose to decorate their businesses, homes, communities, and themselves, highlighting the idiosyncrasies and overlooked beauty of our urban environment.” The thought behind displaying these images at otherwise advertising spaces is rather unusual and is intentionally done so to allow commut- ers to notice works done by different artists. These bus shelters, includ- ing a few at Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, Astoria, Queens, the Lower East Side, Manhattan, and Melrose, the Bronx, blend beautifully into the theme of Back and Forth Disco; many photo shoots were done in these very same neighbourhoods. Al Qasimi’s core specialty lies in photography, video and perfor- mance arts and her work has been on display at many renowned art spaces across the world. A few include Dubai’s famed art houses, Jameel Arts Centre and The Third Line, and New York’s CCS Bard Galleries at the Hessel Museum of Art and Helena Anrather. Farah Al Qasimi: Back and Forth Disco is a testament to how art can speak the same language across borders, cultures and ethnicities. Farah Al Qasimi: Back and Forth Disco is on public display until 17 May 2020 at 100 locations across New York City 77 HarpersBazaarArabia.com/culture/art Spring 2020 ALL IMA GES C OUR TES Y OF F A RAH AL QA SIMI, HELENA ANRA THER, NEW Y ORK; .AND THE THIRD LINE, DUBAI HBA_038_76-77_La photographie_ Farah Al Qasimi_11202360.indd 7710/03/2020 05:17:23 PMAbstract Italian painter Gianfranco Zappettini talks to Ayesha Shehmir about the inspirations behind his solo exhibition at Mazzoleni London and how painting is an innate discipline and language to humankind ALL IMA GES C OUR TES Y OF MAZ Z OLENI L ONDON- T ORINO AND THE AR TIS T . PHO T OGRAPHY B Y T ODD- WHITE AR T PERFECTION An Age of When I was a child and people asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up, my reply was always: “a painter!” So, let’s say that my path started from there,” says Gianfranco Zappettini, one of the most infl uential Italian abstract painters and also a prominent fi gure in the international Analytical Painting movement which spanned Italy, Germany, France and the Netherlands in the seventies. “As a child, I knew I would be a painter, in the same way I was attracted by Eastern doctrines from a young age.” The artist, now 80 years of age, continues to investigate and discover through his travels and studies, and he deems his research a signifi cant part of his life disci- pline. “I fi nd them in every action I do, including painting,” he remarks. Painting is more than art to Zappettini; it is a spiritual exercise, a perpetual med- itation. “Concentration on daily work becomes both method and purpose.” On view until 11 April 2020 at Mazzo- leni London is The Golden Age, a solo exhibition by Zappettini spanning a brand new series of paint- ings which explore the symbolic meaning of gold as a metaphysical sense of spiritual perfection. “Gold is primarily a pure material, with exceptional physical characteristics: gold is the closest entity to material perfection on earth,” says Zappettini. “In the arts, both in the East and the West, it has always been linked to the sacred and the Divine. Just think about the tradition of Italian altarpieces and Russian icons in the Middle Ages: the golden background was a mental surface to symbolise a mystical dimen- sion in which the fi gures are immersed.” Aptly named, the title of the exhibition is a nod to an era 78 HarpersBazaarArabia.com/culture/art Spring 2020 HBA_038_78-79_The exhibition_Zappetini_11215129.indd 7810/03/2020 05:20:10 PMof ‘perfection’, as the artist says, “that is cyclically offered to humanity. The great sacred texts of the East, for example, the Vedas, say so: to a time of decline, diffi culty, materialism, a new positive era must follow, in which mankind will become in har- mony with itself and its surroundings. I believe that we are not far from this.” The works featured, for instance Con-Centro no 103 (2018) and La trama e l’ordito n. 81 - la Luce Prima (2017) are more than just art on walls; they depict a deeper message than just visual beauty. “The Golden Age is more than a hope,” explains the artist. “It is the certainty that a new era will come, when art will teach human beings to raise again their head towards their sur- roundings, to heaven.” During his school years, Zappettini was infatu- ated with fi gurative art and in the sixties, he nur- tured his love for art into a professional career. “I realised that abstraction was the most familiar nuance of this language to me,” he explains. “I was lucky enough to work in the studio of Konrad Wachsmann, a pupil and colleague of Walter Gro- pius, who initiated me into the harmony and inter- nal structure of artworks, whether the work was architectural or pictorial.” During his many travels, Zappettini crossed paths with prominent infl uences by the likes of Swiss architect Max Bill, French- Ukrainian artist Sonia Delaunay and Paris-based Italian painter Alberto Magnelli. “My hometown Genoa was also very lively at the time and masters of abstract art were exhibiting in several galleries near my place,” he recalls. “In the 1970s, I thought that the language of painting should be deconstructed and adapted to a rapidly-changing Western society: this is how Ana- lytical Painting was born, an international move- ment that brought its protagonists to exhibit at museums and art events such as ‘documenta’ in Kas- sel, in which I participated in 1977.” The Golden Age exhibition, curated by Martin Holman, has been specially designed for Mazzoleni’s gallery space. The featured works have been created in the last few years including art from the series Trama e l’ordito, the Luce Prima and the most recent series entitled Con-Centro, Petalo d’oro and Codice degli dei. Visitors will fi nd works made using various mediums such as resins, fassadenputz, acrylic on board and black light. The works allude to ancient splendours recalling a period when art depicted divinity and spirituality. “I love working simultaneously on multiple lines of research,” expresses Zappettini. But the artist always keeps one goal in mind, as he says, “to con- tinue my journey of inner discovery through paint- ing.” Gianfranco Zappettini: The Golden Age is on show until 11 April 2020 at Mazzoleni Art in London, England This page and facing page: installation views of Gianfranco Zappettini: The Golden Age at Mazzoleni, London; Gianfranco Zappettini; Con- Centro no 28. 2019. Resins, fassadenputz and acrylic on board, 170x170cm. Courtesy of Mazzoleni, London-Torino and the artist 79 HarpersBazaarArabia.com/culture/art Spring 2020 The EXHIBITION HBA_038_78-79_The exhibition_Zappetini_11215129.indd 7910/03/2020 05:20:16 PMNext >