Ahmed Alsoudani

Galerie Michael Janssen, Berlin
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 2009

Cologne, Galerie Michael Janssen, The Future is But The Obsolete in Reverse, 2008
New York, Goff + Rosenthall, Ahmed Alsoudani, 2009, p. 47, illustrated in colour

 

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, but are slightly more saturated in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. No restoration is apparent under ultraviolet light.
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Possessed of a restless, violently protean energy, the present work displays Ahmed Alsoudani’s masterful rendering of the harsh reality of war. Executed in 2008, Untitled’s painterly energy belies its intricate, architectural composition. The eye dances over chaotic forms, finding reward in narrative strength and an inherent invitation to close viewing. Born in Baghdad in 1975, Alsoudani fled to Syria at twenty after committing a youthful act of anti-government graffiti, harshly punishable by Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. While Alsoudani has never returned to Iraq, his family remains along with a sense of personal ownership and belonging. An elegy to corporeal and spiritual suffering, and visualising the difficulties engendered by viewing and knowing from afar, the present work is one of Alsoudani’s most paradigmatic achievements.

A narrative, if abstracted and purposefully broken, weaves through the fractured visual field of Untitled. Four maimed and metamorphosed figures in the foreground gather upon a structure resembling a crude stage or dock. Behind lies a desert fort, of vaguely medieval construction, surrounded by a desolate landscape dotted haphazardly with protective lengths of fencing. While the audience is deprived of specific information, Untitled would seem to depict refugees dramatically fleeing a despotic power or recent battlefield. The transmutation of their bodies, frequently melded with animal forms or physical objects, articulates Alsoudani’s protest against the indignities of war. Striving to capture its psychological effect, he has insisted: “I’m not trying to make ‘war paintings,’ but paintings about war. I’m interested in depicting the effects of war on people who live under those circumstances” (the artist cited in: Robert Goff and Cassie Rosenthall, Eds., Ahmed Alsoudani, Ostfildern 2009,  p. 61).

Working in the tradition of master transfigurers who contorted the human body to communicate psychological states, whether to protest war as with Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, or to gesture towards the disjunction between mental and physical reality, as with Francis Bacon, Alsoudani crafts an evocative and compelling tableau. Merging the media of drawing and paint to surrealistic effect, he blurs the boundaries between traditional media and creates a work of unparalleled strength.