Ayyam Gallery, Dubai, is hosting a large-scale survey of late Syrian artist Moustafa Fathi’s work. The exhibition, titled “Towards the Absolute of Nature”, is the first retrospective of the pioneering artist since his death in 2009, and has been organised under the gallery’s custodianship of his estate.
The show features a diverse selection of paintings and works on paper that highlight Fathi’s unique approach to abstraction and his deep interest in folk art. With a special focus on his mid-career paintings, the show outlines the ways in which the artist reinvented non-objective art by turning to the Levant’s cultural heritage and drawing on the aesthetic complexity of its visual culture.
Also on display are archival materials such as the artist’s tools, a series of woodblocks hand-carved by the artist, photographs of the artist in his studio, and a video essay shot by artist Ammar Al Beik in Fathi’s studio in 2008.
Fathi was a pioneer of contemporary Syrian art, who began painting during the latter half of Syria’s modernist renaissance. He was born in Deraa in 1942, and studied engraving and lithography at the University of Damascus and the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux Arts, Paris.
He is recognised for establishing new formal and theoretical frontiers with a contemporary painting style rooted in the traditional visual culture of the region, and his work was exhibited at prestigious institutions around the world. He also contributed immensely to the Syrian arts scene as a lecturer at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Damascus, from 1966 to 1987.
Fathi had a fascination with folk art and artisan printing materials. In 1987 he began doing intensive research on folk arts throughout Syria. Based on this research he began engraving adaptations of motifs and designs from a variety of sources such as Bedouin textiles on to woodblocks and rocks to create stamps that are works of art by themselves.
During the second half of his career, these intricate stamps became the building blocks of his mixed media paintings. Like the traditional artisans, Fathi used natural pigments such as pomegranate bark and basalt to print the motifs from his stamps on to dyed fabric or canvas, thus developing a unique vocabulary of signs and symbols that is rooted in tradition, yet quite contemporary in look. By repeatedly printing the same or different motifs to make layered arrangements, he created large, complex designs on flat washed backgrounds.
Although Fathi took inspiration from the geometric patterns of Syrian folk art, he ignored the symmetry of the traditional designs. Instead, he took a more intuitive approach, allowing his compositions to develop organically in an abstract expressionist style. His palette of earthy browns, tones of grey, and black and white was inspired by the colours of the mountains, rocks and fields in the Syrian countryside and his seemingly random arrangements of rustic motifs represented a reduction of nature to its most organic state with pockets of dynamic force contained within infinite vastness.
Fathi’s use of manmade materials instead of manufactured tools or media was part of his formal approach to abstraction, which was mainly based on the “mechanics” of nature, or the visible patterns formed during different stages of natural phenomena.
But the artist insisted that rather than imitating nature, the patterns in his paintings reflected his personal desire to be in harmony with his surroundings and to capture the simplicity and perfection of the rocks, the red soil, the leaves and the fragments of animal bones that are part of the Syrian landscape. Scattered across his canvasses, the motifs from his woodblocks evoke the inherent movement of nature, and its infinite beauty, inviting viewers to “escape into the absolute of nature”.
The experience of Fathi’s mesmerising artworks and engraved woodblocks is enhanced by the photographs on display, and Al Beik’s video, which take visitors into the artist’s studio in the countryside, offering a deeper insight into his approach to his work and his intimate connection with nature.
“Towards the Absolute of Nature” will run at Ayyam Gallery Dubai, Al Quoz, until November 12.
Hues and barks
Sharjah-based Indian artist and music composer Udaybhanu’s first solo exhibition in Dubai, “Hues and Barks”, tells the story of the relationship between human beings and nature through a series of photographs of trees.
Using unusual angles, he zooms in on details such as the textures and colours of the barks, the crevices among the branches, the interesting contours formed by the layers of tissue on the trunk, the play of light and shade as the sunlight filters through the leaves, and the marks of the wounds inflicted by human beings.
Printed on canvas, the images look like abstract paintings. By presenting a familiar element of our environment in a new way, the artist draws attention to the beauty of nature and the need to preserve it.
“Trees sacrificed their lives for us bipeds long before we were called hominids. They provided food, shelter, clothes and fire to light up the dawn of civilisation. Later they gave us papyrus and charcoal to write their own story. Nature had been signing itself on tree trunks even earlier with a biological time signature. These growth rings carved the biorhythms of the Earth. The high degree of seasonal temperatures, rainfalls, and other climatic changes were fossilised in living trees talking to us down the millennia.
“But when humans started to fly, the climatic changes became drastic and unstable. Human interference, such as deforestation and greedy usage of earthly resources, resulted in the natural writings on the trees becoming more complicated and the messages more disturbing. I want to tell this fascinating story through moments frozen by nature. It is the story of the evolution of mankind from seed to dust and all that can happen on the way,” the artist says. Udaybhanu believes in using his art to support good causes. He plans to use part of the proceeds of this exhibition for environmental preservation initiatives, and providing food for the needy.
“Hues and Barks” will run at Majlis Gallery until November 26.
