Kamal Boullata

Spanning over half a century, works by many of the most influential Modernists of the Arab-speaking world will be showcased in Meem Gallery's third edition of its Modern Masters exhibition series, this March.

Including Dia al-Azzawi, Ahmed Cherkaoui, Saliba Douaihy, Shakir Hassan Al Said, Mahmoud Said, Chafic Abboud, Faiq Hassan, Ibrahim Salahi, Ismail Fattah, Jewad Selim, Kadhim Hayder, Kamal Boullata, Mahmoud Sabri and Marwan, this exhibition offers a rare opportunity to view a collection of some of the best examples of 20th century Arab art.

In the fifth installment of the ongoing series of exhibitions focused on printmaking in the Arab world (Arab Print V), Meem Gallery will hold an exhibition of printmaking by the...

Boullata has created a special edition silkscreen titled, Qasida, which will be launched on the same day and proceeds will benefit Al-Shabaka, a global Palestinian think tank. As found in much of Boullata’s art-making, the work Qasida, reflects his interest in the geometric and the poetic, with a sense of rhythm to be found in its form.

Titled Addolcendo, the exhibition takes its name from the title of the main body of work to be displayed. The Addolcendo series comprises of a group of intimate works on paper, which are created by employing the pochoir technique, as a method for painting instead of printmaking, as it was originally used in the early 20th Century in Paris. The result of this technique, combined with Boullata’s ubiquitous style, is seemingly three-dimensional works that force the viewer to slow down, to study, to soften. The vivid use of colour draws the viewer’s eyes across the composition, stopping abruptly and starting again as colour fields develop, and then break. As Dorothea Schoene notes in her essay, On The poetics of Composition: Kamal Boullata’s Addolcendo Series (Page 25, Addolcendo exhibition catalogue, Meem Editions 2017), “the choice of the pochoir technique creates the illusion of a folded and unfolded paper”.

Works by Dia Azzawi, Kamal Boullata, Marwan, Mohammed Omar Khalil and the late Rafa Nasriri come together in Arab Print Vol II to celebrate the medium of printmaking. These artists,...

Transparency and spatial ambiguity are the subjects of a series of large paintings whose title Bilqis is borrowed from the Arabic name of the queen of Sheba. According to the Qur’anic legend, upon entering the court of King Solomon, Bilqis mistaking its glass floor for a sheet of water lifted up her skirt to avoid getting it wet. Over the centuries, glass floors, fountains and ceramic walls alluding to glistening surfaces touched by water were combined to become the aesthetic hallmark of all palatial buildings in the Islamic world. In the process, symmetries and spatial ambiguity in visual perception was to foster the evolution of geometric abstraction in Islamic art.