On 30 September 2014 Ayyam Gallery held its twenty first Young Collector’s Auction. Fifty-two of the seventy lots were sold yielding 813,000 Dollars in total sales with premiums. Confirming the escalating fervor for the art scene in the UAE, established collectors as well as a plethora of new faces turned up in their droves in order to partake in the proceedings.
The auction features a variety of lots including works by modern masters through to emerging artists from Arab world, Iran and Turkey, encompassing paintings, sculpture, mixed media and photography.
Ramin Shidel’s sculpture Haq (truth), pictured above, caught the attention of several collectors with its brilliant yellow hue and dynamic three-dimensional quality. After intense bidding, the hammer came down at $ USD 38,400. Naim Ismail’s The Long Road, which incorporates the patterns, geometry and visual rhythms of his native Syria, reconfiguring the traditional aesthetic of Arab decorative arts with a modernist sensibility, also sold for well above its estimate at $ USD 48,000. Similarly, Thaier Helal’s new Untitled work from his Made In Syria series saw sold above its estimate of $ USD 18-25,000. The work sees the artist take iconic images from the conflict in Syria, sourced from newspapers or the Internet and silk-screen them onto seven Aleppo made tambourines.
Another high-selling work was Iraqi artist Faeq Hassan’s vibrant Coffee Corner executed in 1967, which sold for $ USD 78,000. The piece reflects the artist’s distinctive style with its classical composition and bombastic palate. The subject matter is also characteristic of his renowned body of work. Syrian Safwan Dahoul, one of Ayyam’s long-time artists, sold an Untitled work depicting the lonely figure of a woman within a deserted room conveys a haunting atmosphere of isolation and estrangement, for $ USD 84,000, over double the higher end of its original estimate.
“It is so encouraging to see so many new faces, both regional and international here, which is a great sign of the increasing depth of the market and should bode very well for the upcoming major auctions of Middle Eastern art.,” said auctioneer Hisham Samawi. Such outcomes signify the growth of young collectors in the region.
For more information, visit www.ayyamgallery.com
