Ibrahim El-Salahi's first solo exhibition in Norway opens at the Norwegian Drawing Association
The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Thursday, November 14, 2024


Ibrahim El-Salahi's first solo exhibition in Norway opens at the Norwegian Drawing Association
Ibrahim El-Salahi, Pain Relief Drawing, 2016–2018. Pen and ink on the back of a medicine packet. 8.6 x 13 cm. © Ibrahim El-Salahi. Courtesy of Vigo Gallery. All rights reserved, ARS, NY 2022.



OSLO.- Between June 18 and July 31, The Norwegian Drawing Association presents Ibrahim El-Salahi’s first solo exhibition in Norway. El-Salahi (b. 1930, Omdurman, Sudan) is a key figure in African modernism. This exhibition is produced in collaboration with The Drawing Center in New York, where it will be shown later this year, and consists of 90 drawings from the series Pain Relief Drawings. For the exhibition The Norwegian Drawing Association has invited the Norwegian-Sudanese artist Ahmed Umar (b. 1988) to contribute with new drawings. El-Salahi’s and Umar’s works create a dialogue between two generations from the same country.

Between Islamic art history and Western modernism

El-Salahi’s work is rooted in the modernism of post-war Europe and in traditions from African and Islamic art history. Inspired by Arabic calligraphy, surrealistic figuration and geometric abstraction, El-Salahi’s distinctive pictorial language is most often expressed through drawing. His style transcends geographical and cultural borders and has inspired artists in Sudan and elsewhere in Africa for generations.

Pain Relief Drawings

Since 2016, El-Salahi has created a series of works consisting of hundreds of small drawings that he calls Pain Relief Drawings. He started the series when back pain reduced his mobility, making him reliant on painkillers. After his diagnosis with Parkinson’s disease, his movement became further restricted, resulting in an even higher intake of prescription drugs. These medicine packages serve as the canvas for the drawings in the series.

The series invokes drawings made by El-Salahi in 1975, during a six month prison stay in Khartoum, Sudan, for political crimes that were never substantiated. With a smuggled pencil, he drew on fragments of paper torn from the packaging of food deliveries received by his fellow prisoners. Due to limitations of size and time to make these drawings, El-Salahi mastered a compositional technique in which he started from a small, central point - described by the artist as a nucleus - from where he worked his way outward. The Pain Relief series is made using a similar technique. With the prison drawings in mind, El-Salahi has said that he considers every Pain Relief Drawing to be a kind of nucleus in itself. “It’s the origin; that’s the main thing,” he explains, referring to his new works.

This way of thinking is a common factor throughout El-Salahi’s art practice, characterized by a personal connection between making art and prayer, as if the act of making carries with it a spiritual power to comfort, perhaps even heal.




Ibrahim El-Salahi

Ibrahim El-Salahi is a prominent figure in the art world. In the 1950s, he was one of the founders of the Khartoum School, a leading group of artists representing the rise of modernism in the Islamic world. Since the 1960s, his works have been exhibited at renowned institutions around the world, including The British Museum, London; MASP, São Paulo; Institut du Monde Arab, Paris, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. His most recent solo exhibitions include a retrospective display at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (2018) and Tate Modern, London (2013).

El-Salahi’s works can be found in various public collections, including the National Gallery of Victoria, Sydney; The National Gallery, Berlin; Tate Modern, London; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and The Art Institute of Chicago.

El-Salahi lives in Oxford, United Kingdom.

The meeting of two generations

During the exhibition period, the Norwegian-Sundanese artist Ahmed Umar will show new drawings in dialogue with El-Salahi’s work in the gallery’s project room.

Umar works in a number of different materials and forms of expression, including ceramics, textiles, printmaking, photography and performance. In his work, he explores the relationship between gender, sexuality, power and art, and draws inspiration from Sudan’s enormous cultural and artistic wealth. This is the first time Ahmed Umar shows drawings in his career.

The exhibition is curated by Laura Hoptman, director of The Drawing Center in New York.










Today's News

June 20, 2022

A chance encounter helps return sacred artifacts to an Indigenous group

Minneapolis Institute of Art to conserve 17th-century Italian painting

The George Economou Collection opens Katharina Fritsch's first solo show in Greece

Exhibition showcases a selection of works by the great German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer

Family heirlooms, redefined

Edmund de Waal opens new exhibition at Waddesdon Manor

Exhibition at Museum Barberini focuses on 'The Shape of Freedom: International Abstraction after 1945'

Galerie Nathalie Obadia presents Brook Andrew's ngayy ngajuu dhugul birra (to see my skin broken)

American University Museum summer exhibits open

Isaac Julien debuts newly commissioned immersive film installation for Barnes centennial

Comic art's million-dollar club

Tissot painting worth £2.4 million at risk of leaving UK

Almine Rech opens an exhibition of works by Ronald Muchatuta

CRAC Alsace opens Spark, a solo exhibition by Jonathas de Andrade

Hudson River Museum opens an exhibition of works by Federico Uribe

Camille Henrot's first solo exhibition in Belgium opens at Middelheim Museum

Marina Otero wins 2022 Wheelwright Prize

The Untitled Space presents Faustine Badrichanis "Multifaceted"

Ibrahim El-Salahi's first solo exhibition in Norway opens at the Norwegian Drawing Association

Phil Tippett's world in (stop) motion

The Moniker Foundation supports artists in the New Contemporary and Urban art movements

Danysz Gallery presents sculptures, burned wood paintings and wall installations by Vincent Dubourg

Odesa Opera House reopens, defying Putin's barbarism

Studio KO to renovate and extend the new Contemporary Art Center in Tashkent




Museums, Exhibits, Artists, Milestones, Digital Art, Architecture, Photography,
Photographers, Special Photos, Special Reports, Featured Stories, Auctions, Art Fairs,
Anecdotes, Art Quiz, Education, Mythology, 3D Images, Last Week, .

 



Founder:
Ignacio Villarreal
(1941 - 2019)
Editor & Publisher: Jose Villarreal
Art Director: Juan José Sepúlveda Ramírez
Writer: Ofelia Zurbia Betancourt

Attorneys
Truck Accident Attorneys
Accident Attorneys
Holistic Dentist
Abogado de accidentes
สล็อต
สล็อตเว็บตรง

Royalville Communications, Inc
produces:

ignaciovillarreal.org juncodelavega.com facundocabral-elfinal.org
Founder's Site. Hommage
to a Mexican poet.
Hommage
       

The First Art Newspaper on the Net. The Best Versions Of Ave Maria Song Junco de la Vega Site Ignacio Villarreal Site Parroquia Natividad del Señor
Tell a Friend
Dear User, please complete the form below in order to recommend the Artdaily newsletter to someone you know.
Please complete all fields marked *.
Sending Mail
Sending Successful