Ahead of its October auction of contemporary art in Doha, Sotheby’s is drumming up interest in the artworks by displaying them in several London galleries.
Pre-sale exhibitions have also taken place in Jeddah and Dubai, and the pieces will head to New York in September, the auction house said in statement.
The artwork includes pieces from western and Middle Eastern artists, such as Damien Hirst, Ali Banisadr, Ayman Baalbaki and Monir Farmanfarmaian.
Sotheby’s opened an office in Qatar in 2009, but Doha became an especially favorite place to hold auctions after a contemporary art show last April fetched more than $15 million, setting a regional record.
Here are a few of the pieces being previewed ahead of the Oct. 13 auction:
This artwork’s estimated value is between $1 to $1.5 million.
This artwork’s estimated value is between $180,000 to $250,000, and is a reflection on the Iranian-born artist’s childhood experiences as a refugee of the Iran-Iraq war. The “large-scale fantastical abstract landscape” attempts to convey some of the chaotic violence he witnessed.
This artwork’s estimated value is between $60,000 and $80,000, and is an attempt by the Lebanese artist to break through the “amnesia” his country adopted after Lebanon’s civil war. The plane depicted is a wreck from the bombing of the Beirut International Airport in 1976, and designed to make one reflect on the atrocities of war.
This artwork’s estimated value is between $70,000 and $100,000, and is a mix of classical Persian art and tradition craft techniques by one of the Middle East’s well-known female artists.
The piece was created in 2008 out of mirrors, with reverse glass-painting of plaster on wood.
This artwork’s estimated value is between $70,000 and $100,000 and is created by a renowned master of calligraphy. The oil on canvas work was created last year and aims to convey the universal and fluid nature of calligraphy.
Other pieces that are expected to go on sale include Hirst’s Black Sun, in which flies and resin are affixed to a large canvas; Khalil Rabbah’s Philistine, a 1997 Oxford desk dictionary thesaurus embedded with nails; and a film installation called “The Passage” by Sherin Neshat, whose work is up for auction for the first time.
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