THAIER HELAL | ABYSS

Ayyam Gallery is pleased to present Abyss, a solo exhibition featuring Thaier Helal’s most recent body of work.

Taking his creative observation further, Thaier continues to pose radical questions. He addresses many subjects concerning our existence, meaning, and current state of bitterness that drains the mind and soul.

While furthering his previous body of work in ideology, Thaier’s new work differs in texture, stepping away from his structural and sculptural approach, the artist expresses himself through flatness. While developing a trial and error process, focusing on layers of light and darkness, Helal threads a thin line between figurative and abstract. Thaier succeeds in doing so through non-conformist perspectives, the artist’s technique plays with composition and vantage point. The artist’s fascination with nature is pushed backwards. The artist’s connection manifests itself through subdued earthy and cool tones placed deep within the darkness, symbols of elements of the unknown.

The process of trial and error creates series of similar yet unique works, allowing the viewer to see through the strokes and gestures, making meaning out of form or lack thereof. The process gives Helal the opportunity for inner-discussion, with an ongoing interaction between the work and the artist. The interactions offer the artist moments of appreciation. The aim is for each viewer to see something personal that references past experiences, to take the viewer to the extremes of imagination. This technique amounts to artworks of hope and pain that hone on uncertainty. Are we heading towards a specific direction? Will we find meaning to any of it?

The repetition in Thaier’s gestural abstraction allows him to answer questions in several ways, giving multiple ambiguous answers to open-ended issues. The artist is looking for solutions amidst the darkness, tokens of meaning and truth submerged in light and color across the canvases. The light is what remains untouched, resulting in an opportunity for color. Therefore rendering darkness as manmade, saturation of pigment becomes layers of missteps. In the series of small works on paper, the artist envisions common suffering, behind the horizontal strokes are faces masked by the same fate.

Courtesy of Ayyam Gallery