Thaier Helal: Landmarks

About

Ayyam Gallery London is pleased to announce Landmarks, the solo show of leading Syrian painter Thaier Helal. In addition to serving as the artist’s first exhibition in the United Kingdom, the event will coincide with the European launch of a new monograph on the artist. 

Landmarks presents two new series by Helal, and indicates a return to abstract painting after several years of chronicling the Syrian conflict through appropriated media images that are reworked as immovable apparitions of the war. Departing from the imagery that first transmitted Syria’s descent into chaos, Helal figuratively reenters the country through neo-expressionist compositions that explore its varied landscape. With the Mountain and River series, Helal alternates between distinctive facets of Syria’s topography, reproducing the monumentality of its natural environment as a metaphor for its past, present, and future. Although a sense of melancholy permeates his impastoed surfaces through a somber palette, cliffs appear to shift across the canvas in several works while riverbeds swell in others, signaling a terrain that is capable of regeneration despite visible devastation. 

A leading figure in contemporary Syrian art, Thaier Helal’s large mixed media works are considered at the forefront of contemporary abstraction in the Middle East. Drawing inspiration from the physical and sensory aspects of the world around him, Helal explores the dynamism of space as it is reshaped by the fluctuation of society and culture. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the Grand Gold Award at the Contemporary Painting Biennial, Tehran (2005); and the Award for Painting at the Sharjah International Biennial (1997). 

Selected solo exhibitions for the artist include Ayyam Gallery Dubai, DIFC (2014, 2012); Ayyam Gallery Cairo (2011); Ayyam Gallery Beirut (2010); Ayyam Gallery Damascus (2010); Green Art Gallery, Dubai (2006, 2003); Cultural Foundation, Abu Dhabi (2002); and Sharjah Art Museum (2000). Helal’s works have been featured in group exhibitions and events such as Fluid Forms II, Samsung Blue Square and Busan Museum of Art, South Korea (2014); Art Abu Dhabi (2013-2009), Art Dubai (2013-2010); Alexandria Biennale (2009); Contemporary Painting Biennial, Tehran (2005); Imagining the Book International Biennale Alexandria (2005); Asian Art Biennale Bangladesh (2002, 1997, 1995); and the Sharjah Biennial (1999, 1997, 1995).