Ahmad Moualla, Untitled, 2011, Mixed media on canvas, 98 x 71.5 cm.

Ahmad Moualla, Untitled, 2011, Mixed media on canvas, 440 x 400 cm.

Ahmad Moualla, Untitled, 2011, Mixed media on canvas, 200 x 200 cm.

Green Art Gallery
Al Quoz 1, Street 8, Al Serkal Avenue, Unit 28
+ 9714 346 9305
Dubai
Ahmad Moualla
September 19-October 11, 2011

Green Art Gallery opens its Fall 2011/2012 program with a solo exhibition for the acclaimed Syrian painter Ahmad Moualla, presenting a new body of large scale paintings. Marking the artist’s third solo exhibition at the Gallery, the exhibition opens on September 19th and will be on view until November 10th 2011.

Ahmad Moualla (b. 1958), a Syrian artist based in Damascus, has become well known for his beautifully-painted and highly dramatic canvases. Composed on a grand scale, Moualla’s theatrical paintings wrestle with the often strained relationship between society and the individual; his works tackle the power of past and present icons through the increased blurring of the line between reality and fiction, and the conscious and subconscious mind.

Born in Syria in 1958, Moualla is considered to be one of the leading post-modern artists in Syrian expressionism. He was the first to introduce performance in his work, first exhibited at Atassi Gallery in 1997 with the exhibition entitled A tribute to Saadallah Wannaous (the late Syrian playwright). Moualla graduated from the Damascus University of Fine Arts followed by the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts in Paris. Since then he has participated in various exhibitions in Dubai, Cairo, Paris, Istanbul and Graz (Austria) among others. Recent exhibitions include •Signs: Contemporary Aran Art• at Sundaram Tagore Gallery, New York (2009) and •New works• at Green Art Gallery Dubai (2009).

Ahmad Moualla

Ahmad Moualla, Untitled, 2011, Mixed media on canvas, 300 x 177 cm

Ahmad Moualla, Acrylic on canvas, 120 x 200 cm.

Ahmad Moualla, Acrylic on Canvas, 200 x 200, cm.

Ahmad Moualla, Acrylic on Canvas, 200 x 152, cm.

Green Art Gallery
51st Street, Villa #23
Jumeirah 1
+ 9714 3449 888
Dubai
Ahmad Moualla
New Works
October 17-
November 20, 2009

At the early stage in his career, being deeply influenced by theatre, Ahmad’s works depicted people engaged in vague rituals, whether ceremonial, festive, or religious, one couldn't tell. Mankind was made up of lonely individuals or groups whispering to one another amid a commotion, conspiring, mocking, intelligent and half-animal. In these works, the theatrical play of life in this bitter and mocking fashion requires people to be in tumult as they take their journey of pilgrimage and/or in life. Green Art Gallery launches its 2009 fall program with an exhibition of new large-scale paintings by Syrian artist Ahmad Moualla.

Green Art Gallery launches its 2009 fall program with an exhibition of new large-scale paintings by Syrian artist Ahmad Moualla.

In the next phase of his work, Ahmad started to slowly go back to his classical calligraphy training and education; words suddenly started to appear in his works. At first they were just words fleeing seemingly accidently from the painting: utterances from a conversation held by an invisible chorus, gradually becoming center stage in his work. A verse or a literary quotation would appear, intermittently dispersed across his canvas without the need for regularity or intelligibility. They are not there to illuminate the paintings or explain it to us. Ahmad is uninterested in what appears but rather in what is hidden.

With his new body of work, words and letters started replacing the chorus; in these works Ahmad is more interested in the message rather than the messenger, where the latter is as mysterious as his theatrical staging. Letters and words, taken from verses and other literary works, intermingled and overlapped. Light, shades and grades of colour created a multifaceted impression of the work that was subject to one’s sensory reception as well as proximity. But the real strength of Ahmad’s new work, is that what initially seemed random was in fact meticulously and carefully designed.

Born in Syria in 1958, Ahmad Moualla graduated from the Damascus University of Fine Arts and then continued at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts in Paris. Since then he has participated in various exhibitions in Dubai, Cairo, Paris, Istanbul, Bahrain, Kuwait, Austria and Germany, among many others and his work was also included in the 2007 Sotheby's Modern and Contemporary Arab and Iranian Auction which took place in London. He is the recipient of various awards including the Lattakia Biennale and most recently, the Al Burda Prize in the UAE. Upcoming exhibitions include a group exhibition at Sundaram Tagore Gallery in NY, as part of the exhibition Signs: Contemporary Arab Art.

Ahmad Moualla, Acrylic on Canvas, 200 x 200, cm.