Ayyam Gallery is pleased to present The Common Pursuit of Happiness, a solo exhibition featuring Mouteea Murad’s most recent body of work. The presentation will be split in two, a participatory installation on the one hand and the completed painting exhibition on the other;this exibithion will take place at Ayyam Gallery from 14 november till 5 January.
Ayyam Gallery is a leading arts organization, founded in 2006, that manages the careers of diverse established and emerging artists. Blue-chip art space in Dubai, a series of collaborative projects in the United States, Europe, Africa, and Asia, and a multinational non-profit arts program have furthered the gallery’s mandate of expanding the parameters of international art. With its widely respected multilingual publishing division and a custodianship program that manages the estates of pioneering artists, Ayyam Gallery has also contributed to recent efforts that document underrepresented facets of global art history.
“If there is an abiding theme in ‘The Pursuit of Happiness’ it is the idea that you come into the world already shaped by other people’s past histories.” - Douglas Kennedy.
The soul is a timeless and boundless gift God has accorded us and us only. A gift that needs to be cherished, studied, and delved into. Past souls’ work and thoughts remain, and our predecessors’ glories fill our hearts. Thus making the task of distinguishing one’s self exhausting. Unfortunately, society’s views and values often lead us towards misconception and aesthetic abuse. Nonetheless, the act of creation leads to a deeper understanding of our psyche. Diving into our complex minds, the most abstract matter, we enter a quest towards reality, our version of the truth. For whoever knows oneself will know God. The time spent discovering and creating ultimately becomes one of healing and worshiping. The artist invites the viewer to experience this relief by participating.
Mouteea Murad’s work sees a unification of spirituality and formalism, continuously drawing influence from the geometric forms and motifs of Islamic art. Murad began his career as a painter working on monochromatic, expressionist compositions that depict the anguish of modern man. In 2007, his work took on a renewed outlook that redirected his painting style, exploring relativity, spatiality, and the visual dynamic of geometric forms. Murad’s work differs greatly from those of his contemporaries; his works present in pure abstraction and harmonious color. When the artist first approached Shabab Ayyam competition with his work in 2007, he presented figurative works. However, in the seven months between registration and submission, Murad had created works that evolved that reflected through the gradual stages of pure abstraction. In his compositions, the artist builds on the breakthroughs of previous movements, experimenting with automatic brushwork, the illusionistic perspective of Op art, the symmetry of geometric abstraction, and the collapsing planes of Suprematism. Highly influenced by artists such as Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, In his most recent series, his relationship with mathematics plays an integral role, with the Fibonacci numbers and sequence at its centre. His forms and lines are largely defined by algebraic functions and their geometric application within the work. Murad continues to draw inspiration from Islamic art while employing forms and lines largely defined by algebraic functions, allowing for his work to see a unification of spirituality and formalism.
Murad lives and works in Sharjah, UAE. He received a Bachelor of Art from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Damascus in 2001. Selected solo exhibitions include Ayyam Gallery Al Quoz, Dubai (2018, 2016); Ayyam
Gallery Beirut (2018, 2011); Ayyam Gallery DIFC, Dubai (2017, 2011); and Ayyam Gallery Damascus (2010).His work can be found in private and public collections internationally, including the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts.
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