From Dust to Bloom

From Dust to Bloom is a solo exhibition of paintings by the German artist Stephan Kaluza. It is at JD Malat Gallery Dubai, Act 2 Tower, Downtown Dubai. It runs from 17 September to 31 October 2026.

The gallery lists seventeen works dated from 2024 to 2026, drawn from three bodies of work. In the Transit series, images that first appear precise and preservative gradually become ambiguous as disturbances enter the image. The Disappeared builds hyper-real natural settings as montages from references around the world. In the Sunset works the same motifs are reduced, fragmented and dissolved towards abstraction. One of these is Transit 311 (Sunset), 2026, oil on canvas, 120 by 120 cm. Three works titled Impact I, II and III (2026) are also listed.

"These two modes of painting should not be viewed as separate bodies of work; rather, they represent different states of the same subject," the gallery writes of the realistic and near-abstract paintings.

Stephan Kaluza was born in Bad Iburg in 1964. He studied art and art history at the Peter Behrens School of Arts, the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf. His practice spans painting, photography and writing, with large-format depictions of nature between photorealism and abstraction.

Gulf News, Al Khaleej and Dubai People each reported the exhibition as Kaluza's first solo exhibition in the United Arab Emirates.