Scraps is a collaborative installation with found objects, sculptural works and photographs by Dariush Zandi and Shaqayeq Arabi. Entering the penumbra of the gallery space, with lights focusing on forms and objects hanging from the ceiling, displayed on the walls, standing on the floor, with photographic projections crossing the space and crossing within and among sculptural bodies and metal structures, one is first struck by the “theatrical” atmosphere and dramatic impact of the work.

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Forms, as well as colors and surfaces produced by fire and smoke transposed into the gallery space, acquire a distinctive aesthetic quality, or rather, one could say, have their immanent aesthetic qualities recognized and enhanced by a simple transfer of place, a change of environment from the everyday world into the space of art.

Scraps propose to the viewers both an immersive and a contemplative or reflective experience. Its initial “dramatic” effect is counterbalanced by the finely designed arrangements of spatial structures, sculptural forms, combined or isolated objects. The very notion of “scraps”, making art of discarded materials brings to mind the frenzy of construction that so far has been the mark of modern Dubai with its accelerated pace of development. A frenzy of construction that creates material and perhaps also human refuse, exhausted, discarded, used and unusable elements.