Art Dubai is the leading inter­national art fair in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia. The tenth edition of the fair takes place March 16-19, 2016 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Art Dubai’s tenth edition features the largest and most diverse gallery line-up to date, with more than 500 artists represented by 94 galleries from 40 countries.

The Rooster Gallery will take part in the fair for the first time and will represent paintings by Kristina Alisauskaite and project by Egle Karpaviciute and Vilmantas Marcinkevicius.

The power of a painted image to create an illusion of reality has captivated humanity since the earliest times. How much is a painted image important for us, and what emotions does it cause? Do we still trust it? What is its relation to reality? Can it deceive and mislead us? Where are the limits (if they exist) between a painted reality and illusion?

The painted narratives about painting and its powers aim to answer these and other questions. The gallery presents the works by two probably most promising Lithuanian painters, Egle Karpaviciute and Kristina Alisauskaite, which conceptualise painting and its history in different ways. Karpaviciute’s perspective on the history of art, the problematics of “the death of painting” and its relation to the contemporary media is intellectual and analytic. By recreating the works by famous artists, the painter raises doubts in the established concepts of the originality of an artwork and the status of a creator.

This time Egle Karpaviciute brings into her work a diptych by one of the most popular and successful contemporary Lithuanian painters Vilmantas Marcinkevicius. His provocative, sensual paintings are distinguished by bold colour strokes and unique stylistics, and have been acclaimed not only by gallery visitors in all Europe, but also by the members of the Danish royal family whose official portraits Marcinkevicius has been painting since 2004. The exhibition of Marcinkevicius’s works repainted by E. Karpaviciute is a reference to the national history of painting, and alongside, an apt comment on the situation of contemporary art and its market.

Alisauskaite has a more intimate psychologised view of painting. Her laconic paintings are most often devoid of any obvious hints of action. They represent wide abstract spaces, interiors and landscapes, in which faceless characters occasionally appear. Yet, her paintings are eloquent and mesmerising. While making use of certain symbolic images, the painter analyses the psychological suggestion of a painted image and its ability to cause emotions. Her portraits can be called contemporary versions of religious icons and specific reflections on the history of the cult of the painted image.