Words by Allegra Salvadori | Photography by Tooze Studio
This autumn, The Arts Club Dubai turns its soaring stairways into a vertical gallery, unveiling Selections from the Perić Collection — a rare glimpse into one of today’s most compelling private art collections.
Spanning three floors of the club at ICD Brookfield Place, the installation forms the thirteenth chapter in the venue’s celebrated Stairway Exhibits programme, where architecture and art are placed in dialogue. “Each exhibition is woven into the rhythm of the club itself,” notes Ajaz Sheikh, Group CEO of The Arts Club. “We see it as our duty not only to present art of the highest calibre, but also to nurture collecting as a form of storytelling.”
The story here belongs to entrepreneur and patron Mato Perić, whose collection he describes as “popular conceptual art” — works that are intellectually rigorous yet accessible, blending critical inquiry with the visual immediacy of contemporary life. The hang is anchored by German painters Albert Oehlen, Jana Euler, Monika Baer and Katharina Grosse, each pushing painting to new elasticities: Oehlen’s systematic abstractions, Euler’s skewed perspectives, Grosse’s immersive colour fields, Baer’s investigations of representation and the body.
The exhibition widens into an international chorus — from Jacqueline Humphries’ digital-age abstractions to Helen Marten’s assemblages of image and object, Walter Price’s enigmatic canvases, and Tobias Spichtig’s spectral portraits, which oscillate between glamour and haunting. Sculpture punctuates the journey: Aria Dean’s conceptual forms, Sung Tieu’s socially charged installations, Aleksandra Domanović’s investigations of technology, and the late Michel Majerus’ pop provocations.
More than a display of names, Selections from the Perić Collection embodies a way of collecting: purposeful, layered, and committed to cultural impact. For visitors ascending the club’s stairways, the encounter is immediate and enduring — proof that art, when woven into daily life, reshapes how we move through space and time.
