Young Collectors Auction: The Inside Scoop

This is an opportunity for anyone interested in starting a collection to begin, as well as for avid collectors and patrons to acquire unique pieces whilst supporting the development of young artists.

We grabbed Marina Iordan, one of the gallery’s auction specialists, to give us the inside scoop on the hottest pieces going under the hammer.

Lot 1. Noor Bahjat ‘Untitled’
“Having recently joined Ayyam Gallery’s residency programme, Noor Bahjat demonstrates in her auction debut an exceptional maturity, seen through the intricate composition of her work and the interplay of colour and shadows she injects to the canvas. In her early twenties, she is definitely one to watch and I can’t wait to see the response of our collectors to her work.”

Lot 22. Morteza Khosravi ‘Banquet (in priase of Odd Nerdrum)’
“This is a personal favourite of this auction, because of its multi-layered complexity, paired with a perfect balance between abstraction and figuration. Morteza subtly points a sarcastic finger at the driving forces of an unbridled western capitalism in this artwork, and I admire his courage for venturing into this subject at such a young age.”

Lot 36. Tammam Azzam ‘Untitled’
“I have been following Tammam’s work for a few years now and am always pleasantly surprised by his ability to transform an ongoing series, all while seamlessly preserving his artistic identity. The featured work, part of a series titled Storeys, proposes a bird-eye view of the destroyed buildings in Tammam’s native Syria, as an alternative to previous paintings in the same series that offered a frontal view. To me, Tammam is an art chameleon, constantly looking for new perspectives, and the expression thereof through new, unconventional media.”

Lot 47. Asaad Arabi ‘Umm Kulthum, The Forth Pyramid of Singing’
“This lot is a perfect demonstration of how Asaad Arabi manages to translate music into form and thereby inject movement into his canvases. Looking at this painting I can almost hear her sing the tunes delivered by her musicians. It’s also interesting to draw a parallel between this expressionist work and Asaad’s latest creations, currently shown at Ayyam Gallery DIFC and marking the artist’s return to abstraction.”

Lot 48. Khaled Jarrar ‘Olive Tree Branch’
“This piece is made of concrete that the artist took from Israel’s separation wall with Palestinian territories, and reassembled into a sculpture, pairing it with the branch of an olive tree. Opposing freedom and oppression, nature’s beauty and manmade cold stone, this work is particularly thought-provoking and I appreciate the universal reach of its meaning.”