“Alhambra” is a solo exhibition featuring artwork by Ibrahim El-Salahi. On display in the Salon 94 gallery, it is located at 243 Bowery New York, NY 10002. The show will be on view between March 1st, 2016 and April 23rd, 2016. Entering this gallery requires the viewer to descend a long staircase. The gallery consists of an entry way with a couple of works and one room at the bottom of the staircase where the majority of the art hangs on the four walls. Entering the one room, spectators note the consistent use of raw, earthy colors in El-Salahi’s artwork. The color palette feels very organic, similar to the colors of pottery or mineral rich rocks. The works include a number of paintings and drawings. All of the art features bodies and figures, most of who have been assembled through the emphasis of basic forms and shapes. The choices the artist has made to render these works suggest an opposition to the artifice. These shapes that El-Salahi uses to draw, though strange as representations of bodily forms, are not truly foreign or false as representational of the body. The shapes that the figures in all the works in the gallery are fashioned with are the basic shapes that all physical forms are comprised of. The work Flamenco Dancers (2012), with a width of 122 inches, hangs directly across from the long staircase. It was the first work that I, as a viewer, noticed. It drew me into the room to stand before it. Its placement alone on the wall and its size commands attention. With its large size, almost confrontational, the forms by which the figures in the work are composed of become an affirmative statement of existence. We inhabit and view bodies every day. Flamenco Dancers’ composition consists of organic forms with an emphasis on basic shapes that are assembled in a way that creates a recognizable human figure in natural colors. The work becomes an invitation by the artist to redefine the artificial application we may apply to our bodies, reconsider the foundations by which our physical bodies manifested from, and speculate as to what natural really is. Overall, the show Alhambra reclaims a sort of ancient truth of human form and existence. The way colors and shapes are composed in each of El-Salahi’s works reinforces the idea that despite what popular culture may claim, our foundations are not artificial. Image #1 Above
Ibrahim El-Salahi Flamenco Dancers, 2012 Oil on Canvas Overall dimensions: 66.875 x 122.875 x 2 inches Each Panel (6): 32 x 40.125 inches (IbEI I)
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Emily B. PosnerNew York based artist and editor. Archives
November 2016
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