MOHAMED AHMED IBRAHIM

The exhibition runs concurrently with Ibrahim’s major new installation for The National Pavilion UAE at the 59th Venice Biennale–Between Sunrise and Sunset–a room-filling sculpture made from 128 abstract and organic elements in his signature medium of papier-maché.

Such was the scale of the Venice commission that Ibrahim spent ever more time in and around his home studio and its adjoining garden, with its old trees, flower beds, and potted plants. As always, what inspired him were his surroundings, and so naturally, his new series of paintings and cardboard assemblages fixate on these plants. They become his central motif, endlessly repeated, reconfigured and recoloured, much as the abstract notations in his Symbols paintings and murals, or the vertical marks in his Lines works. Although often regimented, as with all of Ibrahim’s works these plants are somehow also treated individually and with tenderness. Entitled My Garden’s Details, this new body of work makes its first public appearance here.

Showing alongside these are recent papier-maché sculptures of the same period, including six large-scale works entitled Standing Bodies–among the most dynamic of Ibrahim’s semi-figurative sculptures to date. His three-dimensional works materialise spontaneously through weeks of experimentation with various materials, either coloured or black and white paper, though often mixing in leaves, grass, tea, coffee, or tobacco into the paper to produce nuanced natural and neutral tones. Some are anthropomorphic and dynamic–others emerge as organic plant-like forms, and some toy-like. Whereas a few clearly relate to those in the Venice installation, in contrast to it, here we are presented with an eclectic range of objects–trees, combs, robots, various humanoid figures, flowers, et cetera. The interchangeability of titles underlines the flexibility and mutability of Ibrahim’s visual language.