Taymour Grahne Projects opens Dubai space with Gail Spaien’s solo exhibition
- Last updated: September 23, 2025 | 10:40 ..
Muhammad Yusuf, Features Writer
Taymour Grahne Projects, the London-based project space and art advisory, opened its Dubai space at Alserkal Avenue on September 18. Founded in 2013 by art dealer Taymour Grahne, Taymour Grahne Projects has previously had spaces in New York and also in London, as well as nomadic programming. The inaugural hosts Gail Spaien’s Arranging Flowers solo exhibition.
Based in Maine, USA, Spaien (b.1958) has exhibited widely across the United States for over three decades. Her practice explores painting as a site of emotional exchange, where decorative elements, floral arrangements and flattened perspective, quietly disrupt domestic and pictorial conventions.
The works in Arranging Flowers create a disarming interplay between interior and exterior worlds. Windows, tables, and vases full of flowers form loose choruses of colour and texture, leading the viewer’s eye across thresholds where the natural world coexists with carefully arranged domesticity. Spaien’s compositions draw resonance from ikebana, the ancient Japanese art of flower arrangement, which harmonises natural forms with the spatial environment around them.
In the exhibition, art and botany are placed in conversation, elevating each other through formal clarity and emotional resonance. In Waypoints, the interior is only implied as the viewer looks out onto a blue moon rising over the ocean. The foreground - potted flowers, blossoming apple trees, and a stone wall - mirrors the rhythm of the seascape beyond. In Habitat, a perfect circle of a table, covered in an intricate white cloth and dotted with ceramic vessels, hovers without legs or grounding. Ginkgo Leaves is similarly compositionally disorienting: a row of vessels lines the painting’s bottom edge, above which a single horizontal line serves as the horizon.
Ginkgo leaves float above the scene. The works recall the surreal perspective shifts of Magritte’s The Portrait (1935) and of other artists who have historically used still life as a means of distorting perspective through the use of conventions associated with domestic life. In Spaien’s practice, still life disrupts - rather than reinforces - conventions of stability. Says she: “This body of work is my optimistic way of connecting with others in the present moment. For me, making a painting is like arranging a bouquet of flowers; both are gestures of care and poetic reminders of a shared humanity.
“Showing this work in Dubai, a city where so many diverse cultures intersect, is a rare and exciting opportunity to step beyond the familiar frameworks of the Western art world and participate in a broader cultural dialogue.” Taymour Grahne, founder of Taymour Grahne Projects, said that “Gail’s work creates space for reflection - on nature, memory, and the quiet rituals of daily life - which feels especially meaningful in the context of our new chapter in Dubai. With this inaugural show, we are looking to build deeper connections across the region by presenting artists whose practices resonate across borders and speak to the contemporary experience.”
Taymour Grahne Projects’ new milestone in Dubai coincides with the Taymour Grahne Projects’ 12th-year anniversary, having been founded in New York in 2013. Over the years, it has built a reputation for championing critical dialogue, fostering cross-cultural exchange, and nurturing long-term artist support. Taymour Grahne Projects has collaborated with and exhibited important international contemporary artists, including Francesca Mollett, Dominique Fung, Lamia Joreige, Faycal Baghriche, Samira Abbassy, Katia Kameli, Aubrey Levinthal, GaHee Park, Mohamed Melehi, Anika Roach and Tidawhitney Lek, among others. It has placed the works of its artists in major museum collections worldwide, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah; The Dalloul Art Foundation, Beirut; The British Museum, London; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), California; Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC; The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi; The Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, North Carolina; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (MACAAL), Marrakech; and X Museum, Beijing, among others.
Gail Spaien’s practice celebrates the beauty of ordinary acts and the rhythms of daily routine. Her paintings joyfully acknowledges a tradition of hand-making that reflects the possibility of a kinder, gentler existence. Drawing inspiration from the landscapes, gardens and vernacular architecture of seaside New England, Spaien’s work features the cottage as a site of contemplation, rest, and contact with nature. The viewers of her paintings become the inhabitants of the space they see, evoking a feeling of familiarity, warmth, and safety. The artist’s inspiration ranges from the animated movies of Hayao Miyazaki or Walt Disney, to the symbolism of Dutch Still Life paintings, Japanese embroidery, early American wooden furniture and wooden boats, among others.
Taymour Grahne is a London and Dubai-based art dealer renowned for discovering and promoting some of today’s most significant contemporary artists. To date, he has organised and curated over 150 exhibitions. Born in London to a Lebanese mother and Finnish father, Grahne was raised in London, Beirut, and New York City. He has been featured in prominent media outlets like The New York Times, Frieze, The New Yorker, and Artnet News.
Grahne holds an MA in Art Business from the Sotheby’s Institute of Art and a BA in International Relations from Boston University. He has spoken at various art panels at institutions including Wellesley College, Kingston University, and Regent’s University. Spaien’s poetic interiors and floral still lifes marks Taymour Grahne Projects’ expanded curatorial programming in the Middle East.