Ayyam Gallery is pleased to present Nota Bene, a solo exhibition featuring the works of Abdel Karim Majdal Al-Beik.

 

Through painting, Al-Beik tells the stories of the community, and how each wall has a different feel that changes its look, texture, and color over time thanks to the sun and rain. Al-Beik and his work record time, climate, environment, the imperatives of life. 

 

To rebuild over time, he applies several layers to each plate.

In this series, Abdelkarim questions the openness of the walls. Will they capture and comprehend the violence and atrocities their owners witnessed? What layers will be added to depict and recreate pain? Al-Baik shakes up the need for the authenticity of reality, using these walls now as a means of expression.

 

Guns and knives are scattered on the plates, surrounded by gestural strokes that capture the intensity of the depicted period. Survival and death are translated through scarecrows and crosses.

Next to these icons are stitching tabs, they seem to keep everything together, and act as a sign of hope. Walls and paintings become a symbolic abstraction of reality. Throughout the process, Al Beik questions these things and their existence, has war taken over our lives? Can guns now replace love letters and graffiti for teens?

 

In his large-scale mixed media works, Abdul Karim Majdal Al-Beik transforms unconventional materials such as charcoal, plaster, starch, ash, and burlap into evocative mediums that reproduce the patina of imbued surfaces. Basing his ‘combine paintings’ on the weathered layers of graffiti, markings, and cracks that can be found on the exterior surfaces of public spaces, he seeks to explore how such understated facets can serve as records of the oscillation of society over time. Replicating the outer textures, colors, and shapes of deteriorating facades, Majdal Al-Beik excavates the buried traces of past lives, passages that situate cities as reluctant witnesses.

 

Abdul Karim Majdal Al-Beik was born in a small village on the outskirts of Al-Hasakah, Syria in 1973, Abdul Karim Majdal Al-Beik trained at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Damascus. His works are housed in public and private collections throughout the Middle East and Europe and he has been the recipient of several awards, including those from the Latakia Biennale and the Shabab Ayyam competition for emerging artists. Selected solo and group exhibitions. 

 

The exhibition has started on 22 September and will last till 5 November 2021 at Ayyam Gallery, Dubai, so do not hesitate to visit.