Caesars Palace Dubai and Oblong Contemporary Art Gallery on Bluewaters Island, Dubai, give life to an exhibition project that involves the international artists of the Gallery. Housed within the luxurious resort, a series of shows will be held, the first of which has just opened, entitled GOLD, featuring the works of artists like Gustavo Velez, Gianfranco Meggiato, Manu Alguerò and Flavio Lucchini.
Bluewaters Island is Dubai’s newest destination, landmarked by the world’s largest observation wheel, Ain Dubai and home to Caesars Palace Dubai and Oblong Contemporary Gallery, along with over 200 gourmet shops and concepts stores. In this amazing location of Dubai, art has become a leitmotif and one of the most popular protagonists.
Caesars Palace was established in Las Vegas in the late 1960s during the cultural revolution, marked by the beat generation and the total transformation of society. In contrast to the period in which it was born and by the will of its founders Jay Sarno and Stanley Mallin, Caesars Palace represented the vision to build in the name of Caesar Augustus, the first Emperor of ancient Rome, a resort worthy of the Italian Condottiero that all of history has celebrated and continues to celebrate, and that sees in opulence, luxury and the richness of decoration and art, a unique and timeless lesson in style, that same style imbued with splendid richness still loved today by guests all over the world.
Oblong Contemporary Art Gallery, founded by Gallerist Paola Marucci, represents art galleries in Dubai, Florence and Forte dei Marmi. Oblong's mission is to promote international contemporary art through the works of its artists, and through sculpture, which represents the Gallery's cultural DNA. Oblong's founder comes from Pietrasanta, in Tuscany (Italy), a city that has become the world crossroads of sculpture and sculptors through the millennia - here Michelangelo signed several contracts to supply marble for his works. Pietrasanta is at the foot of the Apuan Alps, whose marble quarries house the world's most precious marble: the famous White Statuary. The city is also called the 'little Athens', underlining its importance as a forge of art and a place of exchange and production of sculptures in marble, but also in bronze, due to the presence of historic artistic foundries in the area.
For Oblong, Dubai stands for the desire to be present in the city that is best representing the current intercultural ferment. In the space of Bluewaters Island Oblong has created a cultural and artistic bridge between the Emirates and Italy.
Caesars Palace Dubai is a luxury island escape offering a fresh take on the Dubai experience, with celebrity chef-helmed restaurants, five temperature controlled outdoor pools and two energetic beach clubs, where adults can create lasting memories in a relaxed and refined setting. Set on vibrant Bluewaters Island, the Forbes 5 Star recommended resort is nestled on 1.7km of pristine sandy shoreline, encompassing a 500m private beach with unobstructed views across the Arabian Gulf.
Each of the beautifully appointed rooms, suites and apartments feature sleek, contemporary interiors with private balconies, complemented by outstanding levels of service. From relaxing at the well-appointed Qua Spa to enjoying lively entertainment and indulging in a variety of alfresco dining experiences, Caesars Palace Dubai expertly caters to the unique desires of each individual guest.
The exhibition entitled GOLD is a brilliant and intensively evocative journey of explosions of colour, where the Gallery's artists tell their stories in the rooms and spaces provided to them.
The artistic itinerary created for Caesars Palace Dubai includes, in the outdoors by the entrance, the 2019 Volo di Acciaio by Gustavo Velez, the Colombian sculptor who transforms matter into works that play between the figurative and the conceptual, between easily identifiable forms and more abstract ones, full of movement, light, shadow and the search for the infinite; the 2016 work Taurus and the 2019 Sfera Aquarius by Gianfranco Meggiato are located at the reception. The Venetian master creates works that look to the greats of the 20th century: Brancusi, for his research into the essential, Henry Moore for the interior-exterior relationship of his maternity and Calder for the openness to space of his works. It is space and, above all, the relationship between fullness and emptiness that inspires the shapes of his sculptures inspired by biomorphic fabric and labyrinthine forms, symbolizing the precious inner sphere of man. The Gold Plata Black canvas is positioned in front of Japanese restaurant, TakaHisa, and The Gold Dress stands at the entrance of Hell's Kitchen by Gordon Ramsay. The canvases are both from 2019 by Manu Alguerò, the Catalan artist who creates explosions of colour, where the paint seems to escape even the artist's hand to find its own space, to create its own form, to give life to a creative genesis that astonishes for its beauty but, above all, for the movement that seems to be infinite.
Installed in the Roman Lounge is I am Different from 2020 by Flavio Lucchini. Known as one of the most influential figures in the fashion system, Flavio Lucchini has founded many fashion magazines, including Vogue Italy and L'Uomo Vogue (Men Vogue), and is the first intellectual to begin to eliminate the boundaries between art and fashion in the 1990s. Inspired by his collaborations with the fashion world, he created a series of works in iron, steel, brass and other metallic materials. Flavio Lucchini lives between Milan and Paris, his art oscillates between classicism and new pop, in a sort of direct line between Canova and Jeff Koons. Mystery, with the magic of fashion, its glorification and at the same time desecration, moves Lucchini in his artistic production.
This exhibition will take place in Dubai till March 30 .
Mia Richa
