What happens when a Dubai art show questions the white walls of a gallery?

Curator opens up the modernist debate of the white cube for a Dubai exhibition.

The exhibition White Cube … Literally includes works by 27 artists and a total of 35 artworks. Courtesy Gallery Isabelle Van Den Eynde

When is a white cube not a white cube? Answer: when it’s a metaphor.

In 1976, Brian O'Doherty wrote a series of three essays and a subsequent book titled Inside the White Cube. The work focuses on the white cube of the gallery space – its blank white walls –and addresses how it elevates any object within it.

“The ideal gallery subtracts from the artwork all cues that interfere with the fact that it is ‘art’,” writes O’Doherty. “The work is isolated from everything that would detract from its own evaluation of itself.”

Thus, once that work or object is segregated from its surroundings, it takes on importance.

This idea was heavily debated during the postmodern era of the 1970s, and O’Doherty’s work was widely read. There have been many artworks that also explore the subject. Several have been gathered for an exhibition now running at Gallery Isabelle Van Den Eynde in Dubai.

For the show titled White Cube … Literally, which includes works by 27 artists, curator Amanda Abi Khalil says she took direct inspiration from Dubai and Alserkal Avenue.

“Commercial galleries are growing in Dubai and becoming the model for the exhibition of contemporary art,” she says. “I wanted to respond to IVDE’s invitation by curating an exhibition that questioned the gallery space by opening up the debate Brain O’Doherty started in his essays published in the 70s, and which still serve as a reference for curatorial practice and context-­orientated art practices in contemporary art.”

Some pieces in the show relate directly to the literary work from which the exhibition takes its name. Perhaps the most obvious is French artist Yann Serandour’s installation – 18 copies of O’Doherty’s book are placed in a white, cubic slipcase. Others are geometric works that, by their dimensions, are aligned with the exhibition’s title.

Saloua Raouda Choucair's Poem Cube is a case in point. Made of several pieces that can be separated or assembled, the wooden sculpture is a fine example of the Lebanese master's work.

“The exhibition takes the white-cube form as a playful terrain to challenge the ‘reduction of artworks to their formal aspects’ when it comes to a display inside the white cube,” says Beirut-based Khalil in her curatorial statement.

Interestingly, 10 of the 35 works of art were commissioned directly for the show, which was an opportunity Khalil used to expand her argument.

Turkish duo mentalKLINIK produced a sculpture called Supersoftwhitecube using artificial light and photographic shades to build a white-cube space. By choosing light, which is used to create staged photography, as their medium, they are directly referring to the artificiality of the white-cube gallery space.

Emirati artist Hassan Sharif also produced two new works for the show. White Cube No 1 and White Cube No 2 are geometric forms made of cotton and rubber and displayed in different sizes. Deceptively simple, these pieces follow the artist's early obsession with geometrical iterations and possibilities.

“These two new works quintessentially encompass the span of Sharif’s oeuvre,” says Khalil.

While wandering through the exhibition, there is a sense that as well as choosing artists who played with the white cube as a form and as an idea, the curator was also attempting to play with our perceptions.

The idea to include so many works was intentional to “break the aesthetic” that is often associated with the pristine gallery space, says Khalil.

“Although the exhibition is far from looking messy or chaotic, there was a desire to work on an atmosphere between a museum display and an anthology of white cubes, disseminated in a miscellaneous or random way,” she says.

The beauty of a group show is that rather than being a simple exercise in juxtaposition of artists’ work, it can also allow viewers to explore a certain theme – and this is where this show is most successful. It will make you think twice when you next enter the white cube of a gallery space.

• White Cube ... Literally runs until Thursday at Gallery Isabelle Van Den Eynde; www.ivde.net