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Ayyam Gallery is pleased to present Liaisons, a solo exhibition featuring Kais Salman’s works. The selection spotlights an important body of work from 2012 to his most recent canvases.

About the exhibition

Continuously challenging notions of beauty, Kais is known for his bold and expressionist exploration of the human subject, society, and the collective. The artist critiques humanity’s vanity, materialism, dependencies, and social norms through various compositions.

Kais’ disfigured, nearly nude anti-heroes and heroines are placed vulnerable facing the viewers’ gaze; the characters are left objectified and questioned. The selection of works chosen for this exhibition highlights relationships or the lack thereof between the characters. Kais illustrates a type of disconnect between the characters, implicitly recreating society’s cliques, rivalries, and complex liaisons.

In some paintings, the characters’ poses, stances, and costumes create a hierarchy. While some of the avatars are grouped and paired, others are left alone and alienated from any connection. The figures each take independent roles, playing a part in the collective consciousness. The artist’s new work, on the other hand, differs in composition, creating a different narrative, one of unison and blurred lines, the figures overlap with space.

These associations link in the ideas of greed, and most importantly, ideological extremism embedded in contemporary communities. Kais’s usual expressionism is paired with realism, and beacons of symbolism spread across the paintings.

Courtesy of Ayyam Gallery