As the land expands

2nd March - 15th April 2010

Al Riwaq Art Space, Bahrain

Can Altay, Fayçal Baghriche, Osman Bozkurt, Shezad Dawood, Mounir Fatmi, Mariam Haji, Basim Magdy, Randa Mirza, Mohamed, Huma Mulji, Rana El Nemr, Fahrettin Örenli, Güclü Öztekin, Mounira Al Solh, Miha Strukelj; with video screenings by artists including Köken Ergun, Ciprian Muresan, Wael Shawky and Erzen Shkololli.

Organised by November Paynter in collaboration with Al Riwaq.

As the land expands is an exhibition that includes art works chosen for their determined urgency and prevalence to the context of Bahrain and the local audience. Taking as a starting point the pool of works in the collection of the ‘Artist Pension Trust, Dubai’, for which Paynter is the Director, over 100 art works that cover a range of media, subject matter and aesthetic tendencies were presented on video and slide to a group of artists and curators during a two day workshop held at Al Riwaq in late 2009. From this presentation a number of art works that seemed the most important to show to a wider audience in Bahrain were selected by the group.

Certain themes and interests dominated the workshop conversation; these included issues of ecology and in particular land reclamation, the speed of urban development in the region and most specifically, in terms of the success and reach of the Al Riwaq gallery, the need to present art works that would provoke a reaction from the local audience. Thus, while the curatorial process was determined by a group decision, and the works presented here do not all relate to any one theme, they do all respond to the location and the current interests of those who participated in the initial selection process.

To make a coherent presentation, a few additional art works have been added to expand on certain themes and ideas, and to also activate the desire to present work in the surrounding neighbourhood of the gallery to include outdoor interventions such as the work Red Zone (a car-cover sewn from kaffiyeh) by Mohamed and a series of open-air video screenings.

Al Riwaq Art Space

P.O. Box 54622

3 Osama Bin Zaid Avenue

Adliya, Bahrain

Telephone: +973 17717441

Fax: +973 17715421

info@alriwaqartspace.com

www.alriwaqartspace.com

Ciprian Muresan / Yama

For the first time Yama hosts a hand-drawn animation that appears like a sketch on the night sky. A commissioned work by Romanian artist Ciprian Murean Untitled (2010) stems from conversations about his earlier work Pioneers (2008), an installation comprising forty lithographs that depict different children holding bags to their mouths. Many have misread the simple act that appears in each frame and assume that the children are blowing the bags up in order to burst them. Despite their naive appearance, they are in fact shown sniffing glue, a heartbreaking and depressing sight that is all too common in certain inner city areas and one that is particularly familiar to the public of central Istanbul. At the foot of the Marmara Pera and around the zone of Istiklal Caddesi every night young boys can be seen holding a bag of glue to their faces in the same way.

Rather than directly reference this act Muresan instead plays on the misreadings of his previous work and has produced for Yama a more humourous, but still dark, take on the issue. This time, just one child is highlighted and he is seen blowing up a frog that despite its inevitable likelihood of bursting surprises the boy as it explodes into thousands of pieces. A fun gesture turns out to be a cruel or perhaps simply un-controllable act and at the same time the image of the fairytale frog that turns into a prince/princess is thwarted. As we look up at the dark sky Untitled lights up Yama for a few seconds to propose that anyone can make a wish, but in an instant this bubble bursts and the sad reality of disappointment and broken aspirations that afflicts these individuals takes over from the childhood innocence of the frames before.

Commissioned for Yama by November Paynter.

Ciprian Muresan (b. 1977) lives and works in Cluj, Romania. He is an artist and the co-editor of VERSION artist run magazine and from 2005 an editor of IDEA art + society magazine [www.ideamagazine.ro] In 2009 Muresan was one of the representing artists for Romania at the 53rd Venice Biennale; the same year he also participated in among other exhibitions The Generational:Younger Than Jesus at the New Museum, NYC; Communism Never Happened, FEINKOST, Berlin and Incorrigible Believers, David Nolan Gallery, NYC.