East Wing
Art Dubai 2016

16 - 19 March / Madinat Jumeirah, Al Sufouh Road, Umm Suqeim, Dubai

East Wing announces participation in the tenth edition of Art Dubai, the leading inter­national art fair in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia. Art Dubai is held under the Patronage of HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE, Ruler of Dubai

The fair features over 90 galleries from the UAE and around the world, across three programmes; Contemporary, Modern and Marker. East Wing is included as one of 73 galleries from 35 countries, in the Contemporary section of the fair.

For Art Dubai 2016, East Wing presents a collection of four dynamic artists who are actively breaking boundaries in the rapidly changing landscape of contemporary photography. Their revealing and diverse artistic practice contributes to a larger global movement that is shaking up conceptions of photography. Yamini Nayar, Masood Kamandy, Sarker Protick and Daisuke Yokota challenge long held notions regarding photography as an art form by employing performance, experimentation and the implementation of digital tools.

Yamini Nayar constructs architectural still life from raw and found materials into imagined, psychologically laden environments. These installations are destroyed after the work is photographed, leaving the remaining image as the only stand-in for the original work. The final still images, disguise any sense of scale, causing disorientation in perception, raising questions about reality and the physicality of the photographic object.

Masood Kamandy, photographs easily recognisable everyday objects and then manipulates these items, both physically and through software of his own design. His images are an exploration of materialism and still life as matter and energy. “The basis of my photographic methodology lies in intervention and material transformation whether it’s analog (as in constructing a physical assemblage to photograph), or digital (as in writing a computer program to modify the image). These photographs are my way of exploring materialism’s expansive meaning.”

Sarker Protick uses photography to portray a tangible sense of light, which makes up the foundation of all his compositions. Winner of a World Press Award in 2015, Sarker has explored documentary work, as well as aesthetic abstractions and performance. His compositions range from the poetic to the surreal, reflecting new ways of seeing using photography.

Daisuke Yokota is one of the most talked-about young Japanese photographers. Winner of the the inaugural John Kobal residency award for an emerging artist at Photo London, he has been praised for, “his meticulous approach to photographic experimentation, combined at times with visceral performances” and his willingness “to continuously test the limits of photography”. He does this using everything from chemistry to public performance, pushing against a long held Japanese tradition of photo book making, performance and exhibition.

East Wing’s presentation of these artists for Art Dubai illustrates how photography is being pushed, both technically and experientially in the 21st century and continues our mission to showcase new perspectives in photography in challenging ways.

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