Abdulnasser Gharem: Pause Los Angeles April 16 – July 2, 2017
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ABDULNASSER GHAREM: PAUSE LOS ANGELES APRIL 16 – JULY 2, 2017 In association with Exhibition Abdulnasser Gharem: Pause _ _ Dates April 16 – July 2, 2017 _ _ Organiser Los Angeles County Museum of Art 5905 Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles CA 90036, USA www.lacma.org _ _ In association with King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture Ring Rd, Gharb Al Dhahran, Dhahran 34461, Saudi Arabia www.kingabdulazizcenter.com _ _ Special thanks Gharem Studio Founder: Abdulnasser Gharem Co-Founder: Ajlan Gharem Culturunners Director: Stephen Stapleton _ _ Catalogue design Kuba Rudzinski / Yusef Alahmad cover: next page: Camouflage, 2017 The Path (Siraat), 2012 (detail) LOS ANGELES Digital print and lacquer paint on rubber stamps COUNTY MUSEUM on aluminum OF ART 94.5 x 189 in. (240 x 480 cm) in four parts Courtesy of the artist CONTENTS 9 Introduction 15 Artworks 15 Camouflage 19 The Path (Siraat) 25 Road to Makkah 29 Pause 33 In Transit 37 The Stamp (Moujaz) (sculpture) 41 The Stamp (Moujaz) 43 Ricochet 47 Hemisphere (sculpture) 49 Hemisphere 53 Abdulnasser Gharem 55 King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture 56 Acknowledgements The artist in his Riyadh studio working on Pause, 2017 INTRODUCTION Artists often play the role of a social con- experienced worldwide. For Gharem, like science in visualizing episodes of violence most of us, seeing the World Trade Center and upheaval, helping us to frame and appre- destroyed on television was one of those ter- ciate our own reactions. Picasso’s painting rible moments that seems to make the earth Guernica, for example, is a masterful response stand still or pause. to the aerial bombing of the Basque town Gharem has deeply absorbed this notion of in 1937, while the lesser–known but equally pause into his work as an occasion to examine powerful work by London–based Iraqi artist certain universal dichotomies that can lead us Dia al–Azzawi, Massacre at Sabra and Shatila, to choose our own life’s path. More literally, depicts the slaughter of Palestinian refugees he has used the digital symbol for pause—a in southern Beirut in 1982. Both use abstrac- pair of solid rectangles—as a visual metaphor tion to represent horrifically gruesome events for the Twin Towers. In his monumental and and each, through the distance of time and eponymous work Pause, two silvery rectan- space, has become as much an artistic icon gles seem like ghostly after–images as we as a portrayal of a human tragedy. pause to blink our eyes in disbelief. On a It is perhaps too soon to gauge how or related theme and scale, he uses the image which works of art may one day embody the of a jetliner, viewed head–on as if about to catastrophic events of September 11, 2001, take off or land, and embeds it within typical but already there is one potent visionary— Islamic architectural decoration, including Abdulnasser Gharem—who has created an inscription of the Muslim profession of a remarkable body of work born in the af- faith, which surrounds and covers the plane’s termath of this infamous date. That he is a gleaming fuselage. These are powerful and Muslim, an Arab, and a lieutenant colonel provocative works that only gradually reveal in the Saudi Arabian army will likely provide their possible meanings. added resonance for an American audience, Gharem’s vocational path embraces the while serving to remind us that terrorism is polarities of artist and soldier, however, his Pause, 2016 (detail) 9 enrolment in the national military academy stamps of Arabic and English letters. These had more to do with opportunity than inclina- rubber letters function like a canvas or paper tion. Although Gharem has had no formal art ground onto which he prints digitally manip- training, as a commissioned officer he found ulated images, or with the addition of color time to study on his own—learning about they become the painted surface; he calls twentieth–century art through the inter- these “stamp paintings”. Most of the stamp net—and to form a cooperative venture with letters are randomly placed, however, some other artists. In 2003, the project became spell out phrases, in reverse writing, almost the art collective Edge of Arabia. Cofounded like coded messages that lend further insight by Gharem, the organization was intended into the artwork within which they are fixed. to help support contemporary Saudi artists The stamp appears elsewhere in his work in reach an international audience. It succeeded the form of a supersized rubber stamp with beyond its founders’ expectations, launch- a carved wood handle comparable in scale ing the careers of a pioneer generation that and spirit to Claes Oldenburg’s sculptures of has introduced a local arts community to the everyday items. Gharem’s stamp has the word global discourse. Gharem is at the forefront moujaz (“permitted”) in the center surround- of this movement, creating art in a range of ed by the phrase “In accordance with sharia mediums and techniques largely outside the law” in English and Arabic, referencing the traditions of painting, drawing, photography, religious restrictions placed on Saudi banks, and sculpture. which must align with the principles of Islamic Part of Gharem’s appeal has to do with his law and may not pay or receive interest. The idiosyncratic and imaginative combination of giant stamp seems here, in a hyperbolic man- materials, which builds upon twentieth–cen- ner, to certify adherence to this rule. tury masters such as Robert Rauschenberg. The media and platforms for Gharem’s Like Rauschenberg, he integrates the print- art clearly borrow from the mainstreams of ed word into his art, but by using the print modern art, but the narratives and images mechanism itself in the form of tiny rubber are drawn from his everyday world, while Artists sketch, 2008 Ricochet, 2015 (detail) 11 Siraat (The Path) featured on the cover of Deutscher Kulturrat (German Cultural Council newspaper), 2011 many of his motifs—including geometric de- safety of higher ground, lost their lives. signs and floral arabesques—belong to the Gharem’s path as an artist, and subsequent canon of Islamic art. This mixing of artistic international recognition, might have been traditions and visual metaphors is especially otherwise, despite his obvious talent, with- obvious in his most recent work, the sculpture out the kind of intellectual openness, artistic Hemisphere. Here, Gharem merges a mosque freedom, and transcultural receptivity that dome and a warrior’s helmet into a single have increasingly defined a global society. sculptural form, meant to allude to the du- Writing from the vantage point of early 2017, alism inherent in most faiths—a message of it is hard to predict the future of this type peace as opposed to the types of sectarian of globalism, here used to describe a world concerns that sometimes lead to violence. closely linked through vast intercontinen- Another aspect of his art is also performance tal networks both electronic and human. based, captured in photographs and video. Issues of globalism, as reflected in visual For example, his piece Siraat or The Path is an culture, have already begun to engage those evocative remembrance of a group of villagers with an interest in contemporary art forcing who perished in a flood and a reminder of how them to look beyond the West to a greater we each choose our own path. In the video world in which connectivity is measured version, the word siraat, which means both a not in gigabytes but by creative endeavor. literal path and a spiritual one, is spray–paint- Abdulnasser Gharem and the younger gen- ed over and over again on a now–deserted eration of Saudi artists he is helping to train road leading to the collapsed bridge where at Gharem Studio in Riyadh will hopefully the flood victims, having chosen the apparent continue to redirect and expand that gaze. 13 Camouflage, 2017 Digital print and lacquer paint on rubberstamps on aluminum 94.5 x 189 in. (240 x 480 cm) in four parts Courtesy of the artist 15 Gharem frequently uses Islamic architec- armored vehicle. For the artist, this form of tural settings in his work. Here he employs camouflage represents his own critique of an Iranian mosque as the backdrop for this theocracies that prey on sincere religious be- monumental stamp painting, which depicts liefs by promoting a message of intolerance an army tank (a common sight for Gharem, toward adherents of other faiths. For LACMA’s a lieutenant colonel in the Saudi Arabian audience, the combination of weapon and army) with a giant orange daisy protruding flower may be reminiscent of some of the from its cannon. The flower and the colorful antiwar imagery from the Vietnam War era; tile decoration of the mosque façade belie this powerful work perhaps takes on a new and even disguise the deadly nature of the meaning once transplanted to American soil. Camouflage, 2017 (detail) 17 The Path (Siraat), 2012, Silkscreen on paper. 51 x 70.9 in. (129.6 x 180 cm) Courtesy of the artist and Edge of Arabia 19 Much of Gharem’s art is performance based, captured in photographs and video, and fo- cuses on our relationship to and trust in phys- ical structures and the natural environment. The Path, or Siraat, commemorates a tragic event that occurred in 1982, when a group of villagers took shelter from an approaching flood on a concrete bridge spanning a river in southwest Saudi Arabia, where heavy rains are often commonplace. Everyone was swept away and most were killed by the deluge. A new road was built nearby but the old one on either side of the washed away bridge remained.