Abdul Karim Majdal Al-Beik @ Ayyam Gallery, Dubai - Nota Bene

Abdul Karim Majdal Al-Beik: Nota Bene

Ayyam Gallery, Dubai

Through 5 November 2021

Abdul-Karim Majdal Al-Beik

Pain, 2012

Mixed Media on Canvas, 180 x 180 cm

© Abdul-Karim Majdal Al-Beik, Courtesy of Ayyam Gallery

Ayyam Gallery presents Nota Bene, a solo exhibition featuring works by ABDUL KARIM MAJDAL AL-BEIK. 

‘The walls alone know our secrets,’ wrote Imad Mustafa, a poet and one of Al-Beik’s closest friends. This nota bene is just one of many composed by Al-Beik. “If walls are the canvases of madmen, then these madmen are my teachers,” he once wrote. Walls are people’s palimpsest and the daubed drops of paint, their ink. Through the plaster and paint, Al-Beik tells us society’s stories.

Al-Beik’s creativity reflects wisdom and sensibility beyond his years. The artist notices how each wall possesses a different character that, over time, changes shape, texture, and color thanks to the sun and the rain. Al-Beik and his work register time, climate, and environment, life’s inevitables. Al-Beik infuses each canvas with the essence of his surroundings, revealing in the individuality each piece offers. Careful to maintain authenticity in his expression, basic wall-building materials are Al-Beik’s tools. To reconstruct the passage of time, he applies several layers to each canvas. 

Projecting himself into the future and stepping away from a cataloging approach. In this series, Abdul Karim wonders about the unfolding of the walls. Will they capture and absorb the violence and atrocities their owners witnessed? What layers will be added to portray and recreate the pain? Al-Beik shakes the need for authenticity to reality, now using these walls as a medium of expression. 

Diving into his imagination and taking from the DADA movement, Al-Beik introduces objects in his compositions. Guns and knives are scattered across the canvases, surrounded by gestural strokes capturing the intensity of the depicted period. Survival and death are translated through the scarecrows and crosses. Adjacent to these symbols are stitching marks, seemingly keeping everything together, acting as signs of hope. The walls and canvases become symbolic abstractions of reality. Throughout the process, Al-Beik questions these objects and their presence, has war taken over our lives? Can it be that arms are now replacing adolescent love letters and graffiti?

KARIM MAJDAL AL-BEIK

In his large-scale mixed-media works, Abdul Karim Majdal Al-Beik transforms unconventional materials such as charcoal, plaster, starch, ash, and burlap into evocative mediums that reproduce the patina of imbued surfaces. Basing his ‘combine paintings’ on the weathered layers of graffiti, markings, and cracks that can be found on the exterior surfaces of public spaces, he seeks to explore how such understated facets can serve as records of the oscillation of society over time. Replicating the outer textures, colours, and shapes of deteriorating facades, Majdal Al-Beik excavates the buried traces of past lives, passages that situate cities as reluctant witnesses.

With the start of the war in Syria, Majdal Al-Beik’s practice has reflected greater usage of assemblage through the addition of found objects such as small crosses, fabric strips, string, guns, and knives in order to communicate the stark circumstances of life under conflict. His more recent works include a series of conceptual sculptures and installations alongside paintings and photographs as part of the larger series Postponed Democracy (2014). Madjal Al Beik now lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

Born in a small village on the outskirts of Al-Hasakah, Syria in 1973, Abdul Karim Majdal Al-Beik trained at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Damascus. His works are housed in public and private collections throughout the Middle East and Europe and he has been the recipient of several awards, including those from the Latakia Biennale and the Shabab Ayyam competition for emerging artists. Selected solo and group exhibitions include Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice (2015); Ayyam Gallery London (2014); Ayyam Gallery Al Quoz, Dubai (2014); Ayyam Gallery DIFC, Dubai (2015, 2014, 2013); Ayyam Projects, Beirut (2014); Ayyam Gallery Beirut (2014, 2012); Ayyam Gallery Damascus (2008); National Museum of Aleppo (2006); Tehran Biennale for Art in the Islamic World (2005); UNESCO Palace, Beirut (2001); and the British Council, Damascus (2000). 

AYYAM GALLERY

B11, Alserkal Avenue, Street 8, Al Quoz 1, Dubai

www.ayyamgallery.com

Summer Exhibition @ Ayyam Gallery, Dubai - Asaad Arabi, Abdul Karim Majdal Al-Beik, Farzad Kohan, Mouteea Murad, Tammam Azzam, Thaier Helal

Summer Collective: Strata 

Asaad Arabi, Abdul Karim Majdal Al-Beik, Farzad Kohan, Mouteea Murad, Tammam Azzam, Thaier Helal 

Ayyam Gallery, Dubai 

Through 10 September 2021

FARZAD KOHAN

Migration Stories #21, 2016

Mixed Media on canvas, 148 x 116 cm

© Farzad Kohan, courtesy Ayyam Gallery

Ayyam Gallery presents “Strata” a collective exhibition featuring works by Asaad Arabi, Abdul-Karim Majdal Al-Beik, Farzad Kohan, Mouteea Murad, Tammam Azzam, and Thaier Helal. 

The word “stratum” comes from the Latin meaning “something that has been laid down”; a stratum is a layer, whether abstract like the social strata of humanity or one of several physical parallel layers arranged one on top of another like cells in an organism. What the exhibition’s multi-media artworks have in common is the focus on strata. Not only does each layer reference significant themes in each artists’ work, but it also highlights essential techniques from each artists’ practice.

The physical layers of acrylic paint, glue, sand, collage, and paper are metaphors — each stratum becomes abstract, representing emotion and memories. In MOUTEEA MURAD’s work, each color illustrates a sentiment and point of view. The contrasts create a more extensive timeline, emitting a broader picture of reality and the artist’s struggles and triumphs. At times the layers represent chronology, layers of moments and instances. Just like sedimentation catalogs the globe’s past, the artists catalog their lives in the artworks. THAIER HELAL’s Untitled sculptural works echo strongly with this idea, as a matter of fact, the work is strongly influenced by the physical attributes of natural settings. ABDUL-KARIM MAJDAL AL-BEIK’s works archive stories by depicting Middle Eastern walls through the years, recording layers of posters, papers, and graffiti - creating a storyline. 

TAMMAM AZZAM and FARZAD KOHAN’s works highlight the idea of “Strata” through style. Both artists focus on collage in their practice, whether digital or conventional, Tammam Azzam’s introduction of material against the cityscape backdrop creates a function, aesthetic, and process. Farzad Kohan and ASAAD ARABI make out their shapes and figures through superimposed color while focusing on narratives of identity. 

AYYAM GALLERY

B11, Alserkal Avenue, Street 8, Al Quoz 1, Dubai

www.ayyamgallery.com

Abdul Karim Majdal Al-Beik, Ayyam Gallery, Beirut - Against the Wall

Abdul Karim Majdal Al-Beik

Against the Wall

Ayyam Gallery, Beirut

22 November, 2012 - 8 January 2013

Ayyam Beirut presents ‘Against the Wall’, a solo exhibition of new works by Syrian artist ABDUL KARIM MAJDAL AL-BEIK.

 

Abdul Karim Majdal Al-Beik’s painterly compositions seek untold stories amongst the multitude of graffiti, etchings, marks and cracks of the walls of Damascus’s Old City. Originally employing only shades of white, black and grey, and the exact materials used in the construction of the ancient Damascene walls, Majdal Al-Beik’s practice has evolved to incorporate a wider palette and the inclusion of additional elements such as small crosses, fabric strips, string, guns and knives; a response to the on-going turmoil afflicting Syria.

 

‘Against the Wall’ demonstrates the loss of naivety that is the inevitable consequence of war and the passage of time. The violence to which Damascus now bears witness is evidenced in the works on display; no longer passively subdued, Majdal Al-Beik’s muted canvases are emboldened with splashes of bright colour and prominent red-soaked areas. Etched demonstrations of affection, quips of frustrated adolescence, names carved for posterity, funeral notices, municipality postings, and ‘For Rent’ signs have been replaced by commentary on the current state of affairs in Syria; the same walls where children once scrawled their names form the backdrop to executions where men and women are lined up and shot.

 

In ‘Scarecrow’, small white crosses are reminiscent of those left at the death site of a loved one. From behind the multitude of crosses, fabric rays radiate outward from a central golden orb, positioning these crosses as apotropaic symbols. ‘In Pain’, four small crosses at the top of the canvas lie in an explosion of black and red, whilst the fractured wall and sutures dividing the canvas like a wound make violence tangible. ‘The Trap I’ features undefined faces, reminiscent of scarabs, created with string. From each dangles a piece of paper with sketched arrows and the words ‘security’, ‘stability’, ‘resistance’ and ‘confrontation’. The message is one of strength, determination and commitment to the cause.

 

Born in a small village on the outskirts of Al-Hasakah, Syria in 1973, ABDUL KARIM MAJDAL AL-BEIK has participated in numerous exhibitions throughout the Middle East and has been the recipient of several awards, including ones from Lattakia Biennale and Shabab Ayyam. His works are housed in public and private collections throughout the Middle East and Europe.

AYYAM GALLERY

Beirut Tower, Zeitoune Street, Beirut

www.ayyamgallery.com