Ayad Alkadhi "Umbilical"
Leila Heller Gallery (Chelsea)
This event has ended.
The new series of recent paintings and works on paper explores Alkadhi’s experiences under the rule of Saddam Hussein, the casualties of war, the Arab Spring, and ultimately confronts immigration and assimilation.
Within these broad parameters, the artist weaves personal reflections using sarcasm, humor, anger, sex, and “an honest dose of reality,” Alkadhi notes.
Alkadhi’s paintings, and the process to create them, embody human struggle: each mark on the canvas is an indication of the artist’s presence, his body and his hand, wrestling with his histories, his ghosts, and his materials.
The layering of such personal and historical content is reflected in the artist’s approach and mark-making, where strata upon strata of content gets buried beneath successive layers. The works typically start with Alkadhi’s signature base of yellowed newspapers pasted onto a canvas upon which he sketches in black and sanguine: bodies, embryos, and faces, thoughts and scribbled notes. A second layer obscures this phase with a heavy-handed brushwork. A third phase overlays controlled and contained bright colored outlines. Sometimes the layers repeat, intersect, and intertwine.
Media
Schedule
from February 02, 2012 to February 25, 2012
Opening Reception on 2012-02-02 from 18:00 to 20:00