Abu Dhabi Art Announces Artists, curator Selected for 'Beyond Emerging Artists' Program

Co-Founder of GALLERIA CONTINUA Lorenzo Fiaschi. WAM
Co-Founder of GALLERIA CONTINUA Lorenzo Fiaschi. WAM
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Abu Dhabi Art Announces Artists, curator Selected for 'Beyond Emerging Artists' Program

Co-Founder of GALLERIA CONTINUA Lorenzo Fiaschi. WAM
Co-Founder of GALLERIA CONTINUA Lorenzo Fiaschi. WAM

Abu Dhabi Art has announced details around its Beyond: Emerging Artists program, which commissions new work by up-and-coming UAE-based artists each year, Emirates News Agency (WAM) reported.

Beyond: Emerging Artists 2024 will be curated by Lorenzo Fiaschi, Co-Founder of GALLERIA CONTINUA, who has selected the artists Fatma Al Ali, Dina Nazmi Khorchid and Simrin Mehra Agarwal to produce commissioned works to be exhibited at Abu Dhabi Art this year, WAM said.

The works will be on exhibition at Manarat Al Saadiyat on November 20-24, after which the exhibition will travel internationally to a new location.

"As we embark on this new journey with Abu Dhabi Art's Beyond Emerging Artists program, we are excited to contribute to the region’s vibrant contemporary art scene,” said Fiaschi.

“Celebrating 18 years of collaboration with Abu Dhabi Art, GALLERIA CONTINUA is eager to witness and support the dynamic evolution of the art world. We are committed to embracing diversity, which enriches our collective artistic experience. We look forward to guiding the selected artists—Dina Nazmi Khorchid, Simrin Mehra Agarwal, and Fatma Al Ali—and helping them develop exceptional projects of international caliber that showcase the creativity and potential of today’s artistic landscape,” he added.

The three selected artists were chosen from over 100 proposals reviewed by the Abu Dhabi Art organizing committee and GALLERIA CONTINUA, and in consultation with Friends of Abu Dhabi Art, a group of individuals who are actively committed to supporting art and culture in the emirate and who support the Beyond Emerging Artists program each year, WAM said.

Abu Dhabi Art Director Dyala Nusseibeh said: “During the selection process we were struck by how analytical and thoughtful each of the chosen proposals were, across diverse practices, unpicking issues that ranged from conflict and war to our relationship with the environment and the impact of colonialism on indigenous plant life in the Gulf. Together the commissioned artists navigate utopian or dystopian imagined landscapes, in often playful, often piercing ways, creating the space for new histories of the region to emerge.”



Magritte Painting Nets Auction Record of $121 Million

Rene Magritte's "L'empire des lumières" is on display during a press preview for Christie's Fall 20/21 Marquee Week in New York, November 8, 2024. (AFP)
Rene Magritte's "L'empire des lumières" is on display during a press preview for Christie's Fall 20/21 Marquee Week in New York, November 8, 2024. (AFP)
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Magritte Painting Nets Auction Record of $121 Million

Rene Magritte's "L'empire des lumières" is on display during a press preview for Christie's Fall 20/21 Marquee Week in New York, November 8, 2024. (AFP)
Rene Magritte's "L'empire des lumières" is on display during a press preview for Christie's Fall 20/21 Marquee Week in New York, November 8, 2024. (AFP)

A painting by Rene Magritte shattered an auction record for the surrealist artist on Tuesday, selling for more than $121 million at Christie's in New York.

The seminal 1954 painting had been valued at $95 million, and the previous record for a work by Magritte (1898-1967) was $79 million, set in 2022.

After a nearly 10-minute bidding war on Tuesday, "Empire of Light" ("L'Empire des lumieres") was sold for $121,160,000, "achieving a world-record price for the artist and for a surrealist work of art at auction", according to auction house Christie's.

The painting -- depicting a house at night, illuminated by a lamp post, while under a bright, blue sky -- is one of a series by the Belgian artist showing the interplay of shadow and light.

"Empire of Light" was part of the private collection of Mica Ertegun, an interior designer who fled communist Romania to settle in the United States where she became an influential figure in the arts world.

She died in late 2023 and was married to the late Ahmet Ertegun, the music magnate who founded the Atlantic Records label.

The sale of the Magritte painting was an expected highlight of this week's autumn sales season in New York, at a time when the art market has seen a slowdown since last year.

Christie's -- which is controlled by Artemis, the investment holding company owned by the Pinault family -- said sales totaled $2.1 billion in the first half of this year.

That is down for the second straight year, after a peak of $4.1 billion in 2022 as the world emerged from the coronavirus pandemic.

During the same Christie's auction on Tuesday, a celebrated 1964 painting of a gas station by 86-year-old Ed Ruscha, titled "Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half," sold for $68.26 million, setting a new auction record for the American pop artist.