PRESS

Dubai, United Arab Emirates, DIFC, Farjam Foundation, 16 March 2015. In conjunction with Art Nights at DIFC and Art Dubai, The Farjam Foundation invites viewers to experience a group exhibition featuring 15 renowned artists, whose works challenge our perception of reality by merging art with science, creating a renewed harmony between man and nature, and restoring art at the metaphysical dimension.

Inspired by the German art movement, Zero (1957-1966), founded by Otto Peine and Heinze Mack, the exhibition explores aspects of Minimalism and Conceptual art, encompassing a diverse range of mediums including sculpture, mapping, installation, painting, mixed media on paper and Neon lights. The featured artists include: Daniel Firman, Fabrice Hyber, Otto Peine, Mark Francis, Gulay Semercioglu, Michael Sailstorfer, Walid Raad, Timo Nasseri, Kathy Prendergast, Peter Peri, Sylvie Fleury, Carlos Rolon, and Rana Begum. Though the artists were selected for their individual strengths without any thematic restraints, certain commonalities emerge when their works are considered as a group. Each of the chosen artists offers a fresh perspective on the fundamental vision of a new aesthetic that attempts to re-harmonize the relationship between man and nature. The works alternately challenge and inform each other, with each piece making individual yet contextual statements that expand our visual vocabulary and cast a different light on our hitherto-held perceptions.

Each artist investigates the infinite possibilities of nature and form through the deconstruction of language, communication and material. Just as the number zero is infinite, the artworks in the exhibition comment on the cyclical nature of infinity, representing the incommensurable zone in which the “old state” transforms and becomes the “new;” conceptualizing the cycles of natural birth and decay through form, structure and method.

Serving as the pivotal artist in the exhibition, Otto Peine’s constructions are concerned with light and space. Using light as his muse, Peine has said,
“Light is my medium...I hate objects that just stand there demanding interpretation. Previously, paintings and sculptures seemed to glow. Today they do glow; they are active. They don’t merely express something; they are something...”

The celebrated French sculptor, Daniel Firman investigates the laws of physics, from neuronal matter to earth as well as composite industrial materials such as light and metal. Interpreting his work becomes immediately reversible and simultaneous. His

work constructs “presence.” With his featured piece, Butterfly #2, he challenges the compression and extension of space using colorful bands of light. Though clever and varied use of lines, he draws the viewer in, using them to create different effects within the space. The base lines compress downwards, whereas the center gives the impression of expansion and explosion. Connecting to the theme of infinity, Firman teases our vision using a reduction of primary color and light within an infinite architectural prism using interminable light rods that rouse a dynamic interplay between light and void.

The exhibition emphasizes the core essence of pure color, pure form and pure light and instead de-emphasizes the role of the artist’s hand in order to focus more thoroughly on the consciousness of the work’s materials and the world in which those materials exist. ZERO has no simple, linear chronology-it is a series of opportunities, of encounters and possibilities.

The Farjam Foundation will host the opening ceremony during Art Nights on March 16, 2015 from 7:00-9:00 pm.