Driss Quadahi at Lawrie Shabibi art gallery

Over the Fences, 2010, oil on canvas, 200 X 180 cm

We found out about Lawrie Shabibi art gallery during our participation in VIP2.0 a few weeks ago and we must admit our ignorance about galleries activity in the Middle East till then. Lawrie Shabibi is a bright example of gallery that came to "stay" and to bring a wind of renewal and modernism in Dubai. It was founded in 2011 by William Lawrie and Asmaa Al-Shabibi with one objective, to promote contemporary art from the Middle East, North Africa, South and Central Asia regionally and internationally, and to serve as a platform for both emerging and established artists from this region and its diaspora.

The gallery hosts until March 14th 2012, the first solo exhibition in the Middle East for Driss Ouadahi under the title "Breathing Space". For this exhibition Ouadahi continues to take as his subject matter the lost idealism of the modern architecture in the mode of Le Corbusier and the metropolises that were made in its image. Gridded glass-clad skyscrapers, which were once synonymous with the avant-garde architecture of the early 20th century and meant to enable a cleaner, more ordered existence, evolved over time into symbols of wealth and achievement on the one hand, and faceless housing estates on the other, segregating the societies that dwell in them. Ouadahi's paintings of repetitive grids and walls have an unnerving absence of human life and are discreet observations of urban alienation and the isolation and disconnection that exist in many modern cities today, particularly in lower quality housing developments. In this exhibition we see sterile modernist public housing developments, wire netting and underground passageways, each linked with Ouadahi's core concerns of geometric abstraction, transparency, opacity or reflection.

Ouadahi's large formal reflected skyscrapers, produced in broad brushstrokes applied horizontally, are montages of spaces and places he knows. In the foreground of these works are a grid pattern, which seems at once a barrier between the viewer and the background architectural elements in which the scene is reflected. In his other works, he is preoccupied with facets that separate the buildings or link them together, such as fences, walls and underground passageways. His freehand paintings of wire-netting are lavished in such detail that they nudge photo-realism: these fences are common in the metropolitan suburbs of France and Algeria, demarking privileged zones into which entry is not permitted or from which escape is difficult. His underground passageways on the other hand have an air of eerie expectation - a crime scene waiting to happen - and resonate remoteness and seclusion.

Amongst the works in the exhibition are three important paintings that were first shown in the 2010 Cairo Biennial, held shortly before the second Egyptian Revolution, and which miraculously survived the chaos and turmoil that followed.

Ouadahi's practice reflects both the artist's North African background and his long ties to the new trends within German painting, especially within his adopted city of Dusseldorf.

Driss Ouadahi - Breathing Space - From 6th February till 14th March 2012, Opening hours Saturday - Thursday 10am - 6pm Friday closed. For more information contact info@lawrieshabibi.com

About the artist

Born in Casablanca, Morocco, of Algerian parents in 1959, Driss Ouadahi grew up in Algeria. He studied at the Ecole Superieure des Beaux Arts d'Alger before enrolling and subsequently graduating from the Kunstakadamie Düsseldorf, the city where he now lives and works. Ouadahi has exhibited in solo exhibitions in New York, San Francisco, Düsseldorf, Germany, and Istres, France. He has also taken part in a number of group exhibitions, most recently in Le Retour, 3ème Festival International d'Art Contemporain d'Alger; Magreb: Dos Orillas, Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid; Future of a Promise at Venice Bienale 54, Cairo Biennial 12, and CU Art Museum, University of Colarado in Boulder.