Elias Izoli @ Ayyam Gallery, Dubai - "Inside Out '25" Exhibition

Elias Izoli

Inside Out '25

Ayyam Gallery, Dubai

18 September - 7 November 2025

Ayyam Gallery presents Inside Out '25 an exhibition featuring Elias Izoli’s most recent body of work. After a long hiatus from painting, Izoli returns with a new body of work centered around the circus of life.

A childhood fascination evolved into a profound reflection on the unpredictability and complexity of life as a Syrian citizen. In his latest series, Izoli uses the circus as a metaphor: its performers, from tightrope walkers to clowns and magicians, embody the tension between joy and survival. The circus and its family become a symbol of the broader social body, with each character representing the individuals who comprise the state’s fabric. With concealed motives that slowly unravel under closer inspection, Izoli reveals an environment we, as spectators, have only observed from the outside. He invites us inside the fortress-like walls, offering a view from within.

Rendered in his signature fragmented color style, each painting presents a portrait that speaks to resilience, illusion, and the spectacle of existence. Figures of entertainment, marred by despair and sadness, mirror Izoli’s reflections on the toll conflicts have on everyday life. Some hide behind curtains, others peer out, offering viewers a guarded gaze from within a fortress-like world. Each character remains confined within their own space, some carry suitcases, others’ gaze looms over the big top. Every gesture reflects the emotional heaviness and psychological barriers imposed by our world. The figures seem unable to escape or engage with a reality beyond their own, a world that exists within the fragile yet resilient walls of the circus tent.

Beyond their colorful attire, the circus troupe imagined by Izoli reveals deeper emotions: manipulation, sorrow, and anxiety juggle between the characters’ hands. Distraught feelings resurface, and the figures cease to represent joy or entertainment. Instead, they juggle life’s weight together with their daily struggles. Balance is key to this new take on Izoli’s distinctive use of collage-style painting. It emerges through the interplay between the vibrancy and coolness of his color palette, the joy and sorrow expressed through his chosen characters, and the tension between manipulation and the direct figurative clarity of his themes.

The roundness present in their bodies does not reflect an idealized physiology, but rather the emotional and psychological weight borne by these characters. A symbol of the quiet toll exacted by prolonged conflict and persistent worry in a world imposed upon us. It is this gravity that tethers them, making it difficult to envision an end to their actions as they juggle, balance, and navigate day-to-day realities that offer little to no means of escape.

This series marks a new direction in Izoli’s practice, yet remains rooted in the influence of those who came before him. The theme of balance resurfaces through a contemporary reinterpretation of Da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, now reimagined in the shape-shifting form of a clown. Like a joker card in a game, the two paintings featuring this clown figure act as wildcards, capable of ending this tumultuous spectacle of emotions. Manipulation takes center stage in these works: vibrant colors, playful acts, and magical illusions draw the viewer in, only to mask the deeper realities beneath the surface. In this swirling performance, joy and despair are intertwined, both performed and concealed at once.

Artist Elias Izoli

Hypnotizing in their emotional depth, Elias Izoli’s works captivate viewers through melancholic facial expressions that reflect intrinsic thoughts.

Izoli’s painting technique can be described as a hybrid, interweaving traditional painting methods with elements of collage. Canvas cutouts form the base pattern upon which his subjects emerge. From children to circus performers, Izoli continuously shifts his focus to different figures while maintaining a consistent intention: to draw viewers into the emotional world of his subjects and create an environment in which both artwork and audience emotionally co-exist. Izoli’s subjects provoke a subtle sense of intrusion, yet they foster a strong empathetic connection with the viewer. The melancholic atmosphere, combined with his signature muted palette, invites the audience into these intimate and emotionally charged spaces.

His fascination with his predecessor, Louay Kayyali, led him to create a series using the same techniques and muted color palette that have defined his work since the beginning of his career. In this series, Izoli adopts Kayyali’s curvaceous, fluid forms to depict human figures, reflecting on the consumerist state of the world, a condition that erodes compassion and empathy, themes omnipresent in Izoli’s art.

After a long hiatus caused by the emotional and psychological toll of the Syrian conflict, Izoli has reclaimed his artistic voice, breathing new life into his canvases. His recent depictions of circus performers place life in a delicate balance, echoing the instability and tension inherent in each act portrayed. Melancholy once again pervades the works, etched into the grimaces of characters who, despite being symbols of joy and entertainment, radiate nostalgia and deep sadness.

Born in 1976, Elias Izoli lives and works in Damascus, Syria. Since 1993, his works have been showcased in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including several at Ayyam Gallery in Beirut and Dubai (2010, 2012, 2013, 2016, and 2018). 

AYYAM GALLERY 

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

www.ayyamgallery.com

Thaier Helal @ Ayyam Gallery, Dubai - Abyss

Thaier Helal: Abyss

Ayyam Gallery, Dubai

22 March - 10 May 2021

THAIER HELAL

Sky Line, 2021

Acrylic on canvas, 165 x 165 cm

© Thaier Helal, courtesy Ayyam Gallery

Ayyam Gallery presents Abyss, a solo exhibition featuring THAIER HELAL’s most recent body of work. 

Taking his creative observation further, Thaier Helal 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 Helal’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, Thaier Helal threads a thin line between figurative and abstract. Thaier Helal 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 givesThaier  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 Helal’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.

THAIER HELAL

Thaier Helal’s constant search for experimental forms has led him to include diverse media, arriving at approaches that often blur the lines between painting and assemblage. With an innovative painting style that has progressed over the course of two decades, Helal is recognised as working at the forefront of contemporary abstraction in the Middle East.

Born in 1967, Thaier Helal launched his career in his native Syria, where he studied with seminal painters at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Damascus. After relocating to the United Arab Emirates in the 1990s, he developed a distinct method of painting that incorporates unconventional materials such as glue, sand, and coal in an attempt to recreate the physical and sensory aspects of the world around him.

Thaier Helal begins each composition with a sketched grid that serves as a compositional base then builds on the surface of the canvas by applying several layers of mixed media, providing a sense of organisation to an otherwise spontaneous picture. This laboured formalism represents the artist’s conceptual rendering of the intrinsic code of nature, and extends to investigations of spatial dynamics as shaped by the fluctuation of society and culture. Thaier Helal communicates movement and energy through expressionist explosions of colour and automatic brushwork, alluding to organic formations.

In the years following the outbreak of the Syrian conflict, Thaier Helal has explored various printmaking techniques and appropriated imagery in works that isolate the mechanisms of war and represent the growing militarisation of global society. Recent works by the artist that use found objects, such as plastic beads and miniature toys, allude to the adverse  effects  of  globalisation,  the  advent  of  consumerist  culture,  and  the  power struggles that have triggered these phenomena.

As a longtime resident of the Gulf, Thaier Helal has contributed to the regional art scene with an extensive exhibition history that includes solo exhibitions at such venues as the Sharjah Art Museum (2000), in addition to  awards from  Tehran’s Contemporary Painting Biennial (2005) and the Sharjah Biennial (1997). Thaier Helal has also influenced the development of local painting as a Senior Member of the Sharjah Arts Institute, and a Professor at the Fine Arts College, University of Sharjah, where he has encouraged emerging artists.

Recent solo and group exhibitions for the artist include Ayyam Gallery 11 Alserkal Avenue, Dubai (2018, 2017); Ayyam Gallery Beirut (2015), Ayyam Gallery London (2015); Ayyam Gallery DIFC (2014); Samsung Blue Square, Seoul (2014); and Busan Museum of Art (2014). Thaier Helal’s works are housed in private and public collections throughout the Arab  world,  including  the  Sheikh  Mohammed  Bin  Rashid Al  Maktoum  Collection, U.A.E.

A monograph on the artist was published by Ayyam Gallery in 2014.

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

Mouteea Murad at Ayyam Gallery Beirut - Through the Looking Glass II

Mouteea Murad

Through the Looking Glass II

Ayyam Gallery Beirut

November 10 - December 31, 2011

Ayyam Gallery Beirut presents “Through The Looking Glass II” an exhibition highlighting the most recent work of Syrian artist MOUTEEA MURAD. Marking the painter’s first solo exhibition in Beirut, this event showcases a new take on the complex geometric abstractions for which he has become known over the past few years.

In 2009, Mouteea Murad began successively labeling his canvases with the word “Trial,” an indication of a continuous path of experimentation. Deeply engaged with the multifarious tradition of Islamic art, he approaches his work with a profound sense of spirituality and an acute understanding of its aesthetic values. Working from this foundation, he proceeds with contemporary experiments, identifying then adding to the modern breakthroughs that defined the formation of abstract art movements throughout the twentieth century. Joining these seemingly disparate schools of art in a single composition, Mouteea Murad elucidates how the origins of international abstraction lie within the essential principles of Islamic art.

Resulting in new forms and techniques altogether, Mouteea Murad reconfigures arabesques with constructivist visions and minimalist divisions, juxtaposing order and chaos as illuminated shapes and bold lines define multidimensional space. Utilizing cutting-edge artistic techniques, he explores the core facet of this tradition by creating compositions that suggest a sublime presence in the world around us so that wonder, beauty and complexity are depicted as stemming from the same divine source.

Born in Homs, Syria in 1977, MOUTEEA MURAD is a rising young artist whose recent explorations into abstraction have set him apart within the contemporary Syrian art scene. A graduate of the Faculty of Fine Arts, he has recently carved out a significant place for himself amongst the region’s leading abstract painters, Mouteea Murad is becoming a favorite among international art lovers with his paintings housed in collections in Lebanon, Jordan, France, Switzerland, the US, China and “the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts”.

AYYAM GALLERY

Beirut Tower, Zeitoune Street, Beirut

www.ayyamgallery.com