Abdalla Al Omari: Unsuspecting State

15 September - 8 November 2023

Ayyam Gallery is pleased to present Unsuspecting State, a solo exhibition featuring Abdalla Al Omari’s recent body of work. This will be his second solo exhibition at Ayyam Gallery, but his first as a represented artist.
Stepping away from his characteristic sarcasm and semi-caricatural representation, Abdalla represents the mundane to express themes that are everything but that.
Deep beliefs and the most discrete thoughts come through when immortalizing moments of everyday life.
The unspoken taboos emanating through the movements, sexuality, religion, and addiction, are all part of the conversation. All along, Abdalla plays with anonymity, keeping things universal: The trivial and banal shared by the ordinary person.

The artist leaves the viewer questioning, what the character is doing, and who it could be. Is it an auto-portrait or people in his life? The paradoxical ambiguity, incompleteness, and uncertainty invite the viewer to delve into the image. A sense of voyeurism, where the headless character is viewed without consent, not as a sexual fetish but as an unexplainable urge to observe.
Scale and composition play a significant role in the perception of the work. Tight and tangible spaces are created within a state of awkwardness, while cutting down the elements to the bare minimum. It becomes a visual depiction of fragmented story and a sense of detachment and isolation.
He captured our quotidian and intimate gestures alluding to our deepest secrets and regrets.
The absence of the landscape and the limited space around the subject suggests a dense, yet minimalistic, compositional play between the subject and the background; an eternal fight between the individual and the surrounding environment.
- Someone's Head Next to Me Just Exploded, 2023
  Acrylic on cotton
  90 x 80 cm
- Al Eid, Al Mufti and The Leader, 2023
  Acrylic on linen
  72.5 x 150 cm

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