DUBAI.- Ayyam Gallery presents The Eye: An Aperture Into the Soul, a solo exhibition featuring Safwan Dahoul’s most recent body of work, continuing his Dream series and including experimental works shown in the UAE for the first time following their presentation at Dahoul's first institutional show in China.
For much of the past three decades, Safwan Dahoul’s work has consistently taken shape within the same austere interior: a sparse, almost anonymous, monochromatic room, most often empty of any narrational or descriptive detail. Within this pared-down room, different phases and events of life consistently emerge at its center, coalescing into the focal point of a silent interior that is otherwise emptied of any distraction, only for this movement to disperse and return, thus rendering the room itself a quiet axis around which life, in all of its stages—its challenges and its celebrations alike—continuously circles and returns. Yet, within the very movement that it permits the figures within it, the room remains paradoxically closed—without entry, without exit, such that everything that emerges does so only within its own limits. Its figures circulate freely within it—able to live, to relate, to endure—yet they remain bound to a space that cannot be crossed, rendering their freedom conditional and their existence enclosed, suspending them in a state of being that is free insofar as it remains bound to the limits that define it.
But what would become of this room were the paradox that once sustained its balance—and with it the illusion of freedom—to collapse? Dahoul deliberately challenges this condition by compressing this once open room into an enclosed, box-like chamber, where any sense of openness that was once present within it is now entirely withdrawn, thereby confronting its figures with the immediacy of its condition—a space that is defined by absolute boundaries, within which any illusion of freedom is entirely eliminated. And what was once a room that contained several figures moving freely within it is now compressed into a confined, box-like interior, forming an enclosure where a now singular figure—folded inward upon itself—is physically confined to a space that seems both protective and oppressive.
From within this newly enclosed condition, the figure’s confinement no longer permits it to fully open itself outwards into the world as it was once able to. Yet, the capacity for its interiority to be expressed outwardly remains, but unfulfilled, thus rendering the eye, once disclosed, as the sole gateway through which it can come into view, held in suspension yet undiminished, enclosed within itself and yet not entirely severed from the conditions of its own inward disclosure. As it emerges, under the limits of its suspension, the figure’s interiority can only become momentarily legible. This legibility, as it is sustained within the eye, is carried by an intense charge that continues to gather within its enclosure, briefly disclosing itself without ever fully stabilising, leaving it neither nullified nor fully sustained, as it remains suspended at the threshold of its own appearance. Such that, in certain instances, its interiority appears luminous and animated, with its intensity turned inward, yet not entirely closed off within itself as it remains open to its own disclosure. This luminosity does not resolve its suspended internal state, but rather holds it under a sustained and visible pressure, where the figure remains responsive despite its limits. And as this luminosity begins to fade, it gives way to a still and darkened opacity, not one brought about through violent shock or rupture, but rather one that is brought about by a quiet exhaustion as its charge is gradually worn down to a point where it is no longer reactive, leaving it reduced and flattened into the exhausted condition in which it is now held.
Within this condition, the figure’s interiority remains in suspension, still unresolved, as it begins to settle into a condition that is no longer distinct from what it is. As its interiority diminishes to the point where it can no longer fully disclose itself, what remains, then, is an interior state that becomes depleted, prolonged in its latency and left without any assurance of its return to itself. In time, the figure subsides into a prolonged state of waiting; a state in which its interiority remains present, disclosing a self that remains unactualized and unable to move beyond itself. As this state of waiting persists, it no longer holds the possibility of its return to itself in reserve, but instead wears it down over time as it recedes towards a point beyond return, thus rendering its return to the self progressively untenable.
As this state of waiting endures and deepens, and the prospect of the figure’s return to itself becomes increasingly improbable; what, then, remains once this uncertainty is no longer concerned with the question of that return, but rather with what remains of its interiority, once its return is deemed no longer possible? What remains is not a self in the process of becoming, but one that is neither able to project itself outwards nor resolve itself inwards, leaving it in an indefinite state of suspension, entirely contained within its own persistence. From within this persistence, the self, now diminished to scarcely more than its own existence, remains only in itself, reduced to nothing more than an indefinite state of waiting bounded only by the limits of its own finitude.
– William Kaprielian, 2026
With a career spanning over three decades, Safwan Dahoul is now a household name both regionally and internationally. As one of the foremost painters in the Arab world, the artist has repeatedly demonstrated how contemporary modes of figuration can describe the psychic terrain of a region that is in constant flux. Throughout his career, Dahoul has managed to include varying artistic styles while still keeping to his core identity and style.
Dahoul is mostly known for his beautiful melancholic and monochromatic works that present influences from the Cubist style of Picasso ranging to Assyrian and Pharaonic art. Since the late 1980s, the artist began an ongoing body of work investigating the dream state. Simply entitled the Dream series, these works have explored the physical and psychological effects of alienation, solitude, and longing that punctuate the human experience at various stages in life.
Partly autobiographical, this seminal body of work uses the formal properties of painting to recreate the subconscious sense of enclosure that surfaces during times of crisis, whether in the event of mourning, estrangement, or political conflict. The artist’s recurring female protagonist facilitates this visceral experience through her contorted body, often-vacant eyes, and minimised yet monumental physicality. Depicted in the confinement of ambiguous settings, her presence is defined by the placement of various objects that seem to deepen the state of her disaffection, as even the familiar becomes a trigger of distress.
Born in 1961 in Hama, Syria, Dahoul was initially trained by leading modernists at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Damascus before travelling to Belgium, where he earned a doctorate from the Higher Institute of Plastic Arts in Mons. Upon returning to Syria, he began teaching at the Faculty of Fine Arts and was a prominent member of the Damascus art scene. In the span of a decade, Dahoul nurtured a new generation of artists as an active mentor whose evolving aesthetic often ignited new directions in painting. Given the trajectory and status of his painting style, Dahoul’s career is regarded as a crucial link between modern and contemporary Arab art.
Dahoul’s paintings are held in numerous private and public collections, including the Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris; Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah; National Museum, Damascus; The Samawi Collection, Dubai; The Farjam Collection, Dubai; the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development, Kuwait. Recently, he has participated in solo and group exhibitions at Ayyam Gallery DIFC and 11 Alserkal Avenue, Dubai (2018, 2017, 2016); Samsung Blue Square and Busan Museum of Art, South Korea (2014); Ayyam Gallery DIFC, Dubai (2014, 2011); Ayyam Gallery Beirut (2014); Ayyam Gallery London (2013); Edge of Arabia, London (2013); and Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris (2012).
