Alexander Calder and Joan Miró

The upstairs corner of Boutique 1, on JBR’s The Walk, has been redesigned into a smart gallery space that left us impressed. After last month’s exhibition of intense, dramatic photographs by Lebanese artist Joanna Andraos, the gallery now exhibits a selection of lithographs by two of the masters of Modernism. Alexander Calder, credited with the invention of the mobile sculpture, and Joan Miró, referred to by André Breton as ‘the most surreal of us all’, both produced outstanding lithographs that are represented at this show. The steady, well executed compositions by Calder demonstrate the balance of colour and form that the American artist really made his own.
Boutique 1 Gallery (04 423 1999), The Walk, JBR. Until March 13

Scraps

One year after a blaze ripped through Al Quoz, igniting a fireworks warehouse and killing two people, Total Arts now exhibits a number of found objects and photographs from this very local disaster. Dariush Zandi and artist Shaqayeq Arabi collaborated to collect these items from the wreckage: twisted scissors lie bonded together in the heat, 25 generators appear like burned out spaces and a collection of singed knives appear like the pattern of wallpaper.

The artists spent four months collecting these items and had to sift through the wreckage. But among the destruction they, oddly, found creation – sculptures formed by chaos, objects transformed by uncontrollable forces.

It’s not often we see a piece of work that reflects on Dubai in this way. Zandi and Arabi have created a strange memorial to an event that happened in one of the last unplanned and raw parts of Dubai. The show is in the gallery from February 27, but opens officially on March 10. Recommended.
Total Arts at The Courtyard (04 347 5050), Behind Times Square, Al Quoz. Until March 31.