not cancelled S H A H P O U R P O U YA N

I S H M A E L R A N D A L L W E E K S

Lawrie Shabibi is pleased to announce its participation in not cancelled - a week-long digital art event featuring several invited Dubai galleries from 29 May until 6 June 2020. Each of the galleries will present two artists from their programme, and throughout the week the online event will feature walk-throughs and exclusive interviews with the gallerists and artists involved.

n o t c a n c e l l e d

Lawrie Shabibi will present new works by Shahpour Pouyan and Ishmael Randall Weeks. Ishmael Randall Weeks, whose show was cancelled due to the gallery closures in March, presents five works from the series Codigos Atemporales. These are wall sculptures that are composed of stratifications of materials taken from objective explorations of his city Cusco. The works reference geological cuts, tailings and the layering of human and organic sediments that contemplate the composition of time and how we form it as a society. Created layer by layer, without following any fixed pattern or correlation, other than the idea of a visual diary that explores the potential of abstract samples with a fictional (and real) reference to archaeology, anthropology and architecture.

Shahpour Pouyan on the other hand presents two-dimensional miniatures, a continuation of a series he started in 2008, that are reproductions of medieval and pre-modern paintings from Iran and central Asia that are edited (digitally and manually) to remove any of the characters. Without the protagonists, what remains are city scenes, landcsapes and public spaces bereft of people – a solitary bathhouse for example or an empty doorway. These arresting paintings, ironically executed before the pandemic, resonate with our collective lockdown experiences.

Not cancelled is run by Treat Agency whose founder and CEO wanted to offer support to its local art scene in the wake of the global COVID-19 pandemic. After a successful launch in Vienna in April, they expanded with a Berlin iteration, followed by Paris and Warsaw and a variety of cities to follow.

SHAHPOUR POUYAN

Shahpour Pouyan (b. 1979, Iran) has an MFA in Integrated Practices and New Forms at Pratt Institute, New York, and has an MFA in Painting from the Tehran University of Art. Select solo gallery shows include: After Examining The Logbook, The Doctors Assume They Are Dealing With The Plague, Galerie Nathalie Obadia Cloitre Saint Merri; Untitled, Barbara Walters Gallery, Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville; Wūshuǐ, Copperfield, London; The Incarnation of the Body Politic, The Armory Show, Focus Section, New York; My Place is the Placeless, Lawrie Shabibi, Dubai; We owe this considerable land to the horizon line, Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris; History Travels at Different Speeds, Copperfield, London; PTSD, Lawrie Shabibi, Dubai; Full Metal Jacket, Lawrie Shabibi, Dubai; The Hooves, Sixty Six Art Gallery, Tehran; Bana Bar In, Nar Gallery, Tehran, Iran.

Recent group exhibitions include Clapping With Stones, Rubin Museum, New York; The Moon: A Voyage Through Time, Aga Khan Museum, Toronto; Punk Orientalism, Curated by Sara Raza, MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina; Only the Morning Bird Treasures the Flower Garden, REDCAT, Los Angeles; In the Fields of Empty Days, Los Angeles County Museum (LACMA); The New Minimalists, Abrons Arts Center, New York City; LB01, Lahore Biennial; Rebel, Jester, Mystic, Poet: Contemporary Persians, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; The Silk Road and World’s Civilizations, 7th Beijing Biennale,National Art Museum of China; Insights, Art Basel Hong Kong; Iranian Voices, Recent Acquisitions of Works on Paper, British Museum, London; The Jameel Prize 4 exhibition, Pera Museum, Istanbul; Recentring Modernism, Insights Sector, with Lawrie Shabibi, Art Basel Hong Kong; Memory and Continuity: A Selection from the Huma Kabakci Collection, Pera Museum, Istanbul; Global/Local 1960-2015: Six Artists From Iran, Grey Art Gallery, New York University; Whorled Explorations, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kochi.

His work is part of many prominent private and public collections including: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, New York; Collection of Robert Littman and Sully Bonnelly, New York, USA; The Abby Weed Grey Collection of Modern Asian and Middle Eastern Art, New York; The British Museum, London; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Mohammed Afkhami Collection, Dubai, Huma Kabakci Collection, Istanbul; SYZYGY, New York; The Farjam collection, Dubai; Zoroastrian Cultural Institute, Paris and the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Tehran.

In 2016, Pouyan was shortlisted for the Jameel Prize 4 by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK and has been awarded the Civitella Ranieri Fellowship for Visual Arts in Umbria, Italy.

Abu Zayd, nearly naked, stands in a doorway and recites poetry to a crowd, 2018, Mixed Media on Hahnemühle cotton paper

38.2 x 30.2 cm Price: $ 8,500.00

Al-Harith begins his narration by noting that he had come to town to settle some business, but that the winter weather was so severe there that he stayed indoors as much as possible. Work required that he leave his lodging once day, and he came upon a crowd of people who had gathered around an old man naked, save for a turban wrapped from a handkerchief and “breeched with a napkin” (i.e. a loincloth). (Later overpainting, perhaps a repair, almost entirely concealed the naked man, who stands in the archway.) The inadequately dressed man addresses the crowd in verse: "O people, nothing can announce to you my poverty More truly than this, my nakedness in the season of cold. So from my outward misery, judge the inward of my condition, and what is hidden of my state. And beware a change in the truce of fortune: For know that I was once illustrious in rank, I had command of plenty, and of a blade that severed; My yellow coins served my friends, my lances destroyed my foes".

The original miniature from a 13th century Maqamat of Al-Hariri illustrated by Al-Wasiti

Iskandar visits the Ka‘ba in Mecca, 2018 Mixed Media on Hahnemühle cotton paper 34.8 x 23.4 cm Price: $ 9,200.00

The original miniature from a Shahnama of Firdausi, executed in Shiraz, 1480

Iskandar visits the Ka‘ba in Mecca, from the Book of Kings (Shahnama) by Firdausi. Firdausi's epic Book of Kings was composed c. 1010, and tells in Persian verse the mythical histories of fifty kings and queens from ancient pre-Islamic Iran. The stories blend historical figures and events with dramatic legend, featuring superhuman heroes, supernatural monsters and kings of variable quality. Depicted here is an episode from the reign of Iskandar, or Alexander the Great. Firdausi describes how Iskandar conquers Iran and India, and then pauses to make a pilgrimage to the Ka`ba shrine in Mecca, before proceeding to Egypt. In Mecca he meets the descendants of the prophet Ibhraim (Abraham).

Reception of Elkas Mirza, 2020 Mixed Media on Hahnemühle cotton paper

34.2 x 23.8 cm Price: $ 9,200.00

A lady offers a cool drink to the poet, 2020 Mixed Media on Hahnemühle cotton paper 24.9 x 15.2 cm Price: $ 10,500.00

Mihr in a bath house in Khawrazm, 2018 Mixed Media on Hahnemühle cotton paper

25 x 20 cm Price: $ 9,200.00

I SHMAEL RANDALL WEEKS

Ishmael Randall Weeks (b. 1976, Peru) graduated from Bard College in 2000 and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2007. He has exhibited worldwide including at the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern of Art; MoMA P.S.1, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Lima; The Drawing Center, New York; Macro Museum | Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma; The Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Mexico City; the Bronx Museum, New York; and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, United States. He has participated in the Havana Biennial, the Bienial de Cuenca (editions IX and the XIV), and El Museo’s Bienal: (S) Files Biennial 6th Edition, El Museo del Barrio, New York, amongst others.

His work is in several public collections including Lima Art Museum (MALI); JUMEX Collection, Mexico City; Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA); Museo d’Arte Contemporaneo (MACRO), Rome; Madeira Corporate Services Collection, Portugal; Albright-Knox Gallery, New York; Deutsche Bank Collection, London; Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena; Fondazione Giuliani, Rome; Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami; LARA Asiaciti Trust Group, Singapore; Mario Testino Art Foundation (MATE), Venice; SPACE Collection, California and The Perez Collection, Miami.

He currently lives and works between Brooklyn, NY and Lima, Peru.

Código atemporal #55, 2020 Cement, Grout 700, adobe, brick dust, soils, additives, wood, aluminum 40 x 32 x 10 cm Price: $ 7,000.00

Código atemporal #44, 2020 Cement, Grout 700, adobe, brick dust, soils,

additives, wood, aluminum 40 x 32 x 10 cm

Price: $ 7,000.00

Código atemporal #54, 2020 Cement, Grout 700, adobe, brick dust, soils, additives, wood, aluminum 40 x 32 x 10 cm Price: $ 7,000.00

Código atemporal #53, 2020 Cement, Grout 700, adobe, brick dust, soils,

additives, wood, aluminum 40 x 32 x 10 cm

Price: $ 7,000.00

Código atemporal #49, 2020 Cement, Grout 700, adobe, brick dust, soils, additives, wood, aluminum 40 x 32 x 10 cm Price: $ 7,000.00

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