SHROUDED MEMORIES

Dubai | 24/06/2010 to 26/06/2010

Wael Darwish’s painting projects in the past few years were inspired by American Color Field painting and French Lyrical Abstraction, where large “fields” of flat solid color colonize harmoniously large areas of the canvas to create a homogenous surface of flat picture plane, stressing on the overall consistency of form over the brush movement and brushstrokes. Contrary to standard Color Field and Lyrical Abstraction Darwish for years have successfully combined abstraction styles and painterly techniques with elements of figuration and cognitive representation.

In his 2010 works, Wael Darwish uses his cumulative experience as a painter as well as an interdisciplinary artist to create canvases that uses photography as a base for his brush, eliminating along the way backgrounds. In this process, the artist creates, and narrates, an alternative reality for the figures that filled the planes of the initial photograph. The streets of Cairo act as a location much representative of contemporary Middle Eastern urban cities; ordinary citizens dwell the streets and alleys alongside soldiers and traffic policemen. Every photographed or painted individual play a different role while interacting with each other in a universe that is almost hyper real. Darwish attempts to extend the limits of standard painting, and expands the battery of symbols proposed by this medium by accumulating what photography can add to the canvas: frozen reality, depth of field, and more visual symbols that Jean Baudrillard proposed –in his seminal work on simulation and simulacra-- as defining our contemporary over-industrialized societies today.

For more info:
Tel: +9714 3408660
Fax: +9714 3408661
Email: info@artsawa.com
Website: www.artsawa.com

Opening : 24-Jun-2010 07:30 PM
Exhibition : 26-Jun-2010 till 25-Jul-2010
Artist(s) : WAEL DARWESH
Venue : Art Sawa

Start Time: Thursday, June 24, 2010 at 7:30pm
End Time: Sunday, July 25, 2010 at 10:00pm
Location: Art Sawa - Rd. 323 - Al Quoz - Dubai, United Arab Emirates