Curatorial Ethos
The gallery focuses on presenting established and emerging contemporary artists across painting, sculpture, and mixed-media practices, often highlighting Italian and European figures alongside global voices. Its programme emphasizes dialogue between different artistic languages, such as figurative painting and Pop-inflected sculpture, while also engaging in cultural initiatives like creative entrepreneurship forums.
Oblong Contemporary Gallery is an Italian commercial gallery with spaces in Dubai and Forte dei Marmi, Italy, founded in 2021 by Emanuela Venturini and Paola Marucci. Currently located on Al Khayat Avenue in Al Quoz, the gallery specialises in bronze and marble sculpture with strong links to Pietrasanta — the Tuscan city historically associated with Michelangelo and Italy's marble and foundry traditions. The programme presents established and emerging international artists including Giuseppe Maiorana, Stefano Bombardieri, Jonty Hurwitz and Mr. Brainwash, alongside painters from Iran, Slovenia and South Korea. The gallery also runs workshops, masterclasses in Pietrasanta sculpting techniques and a cross-cultural art exchange programme between Dubai and Italy.
Why this gallery matters
Exhibo editorial
Pietrasanta is a small Tuscan city near the Apuan Alps where Michelangelo came to pick marble, and where an army of sculptors has gathered in his wake for five centuries since. It has foundries, marble studios and a particular culture of making things that last. Emanuela Venturini and Paola Marucci grew up in and around that world — one as an architect with a sensitivity for art, the other from economics who moved to Pietrasanta and got absorbed into the sculpture scene. They founded Oblong in Forte dei Marmi in 2021 and then opened in Dubai, first on Bluewaters Island as the first gallery on the island, and later on Al Khayat Avenue in Al Quoz. The name is a shape — two long sides, two short sides, all right angles — and also a description of what the gallery does: two founders, two cities, two cultures, held together by a genuine love for form. The speciality is sculpture, particularly bronze and marble. The programme has included Igor Mitoraj, Stefano Bombardieri, Jonty Hurwitz and Mr. Brainwash alongside Iranian painters and Slovenian printmakers. Pietrasanta by way of Al Quoz.
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Address
Al Khayat Art Avenue - 10 19 Street - Al Quoz
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