'Opened Ground', 2007
charcoal pastel and acrylic
on paper, 96 x 84 inches
'We Die Out of Hand', 2007
charcoal pastel and acrylic
on paper, 108 x 96 inches
'You no longer have hands', 2007
charcoal pastel and acrylic
on paper, 108 x 84 inches
'If there were anywhere but desert', 2007
oil on canvas, 96 x 84 inches
Fresh from participating in the four-person show, The Atrocity Exhibition, at Thierry Goldberg Projects in June-July this year, Ahmed Alsoudani is to have a solo outing at the Lower East Side gallery in September. Alsoudani fled his native Baghdad for the US after the 1990-91 Gulf War, and his large-scale semi-figurative drawings and paintings are consequently informed by both personal familiarity with and media accounts of that war-torn city. Such details as flailing limbs, soldiers' garb, manacles and fences in the desert, together with a general air of frenzy and confusion serve to mark these works out as images of war, though references to particular places and events mostly remain undisclosed. In one drawing, a huddle of running people suggests an evacuation of some sort, while another may present either a violent struggle among a group of individuals, or their wholesale massacre at the hands of unseen assailants. A notable exception to Alsoudani's rule of non-specificity is the drawing, We Die Out of Hand (2007), in which what appear to be prison inmates are shown at the mercy of a guard, with bags placed over their heads - a sure reference to the Abu Graib offences. The prominent inclusion of the guard in this work is untypical for Alsoudani, who mostly prefers, à la Picasso's Guernica, to show the destructive effects of war without revealing the faces of combatants themselves. This strategy has been interpreted as a response to what Alsoudani perceives to be America's largely estranged relation to the reality of warfare.
Often, Alsoudani works in charcoal, acrylic and pastel on paper, combining a black and white or sepia palette with a loose handling and managing, therefore, to evoke both photojournalistic reportage as well as certain of his painterly forerunners. He deploys sweeping and aggressive strokes in the manner of Francis Bacon and Willem de Kooning, and at other times lets his brush drift with the lyricism of, say, RB Kitaj. In fact, Bacon and de Kooning are perhaps the most obvious anchors for Alsoudani's works, since the numerous contorted figures of the latter seem to merge into and fold over each other, and they constantly hover on the verge of disintegration. The title of a 2007 work, You No Longer Have Hands, nods towards both the artist's practice of abstracting the figure, and dismemberment of the victims of war and torture.
Bill Roberts
Ahmed Alsoudani
Until 14 October 2007
Thierry Goldberg Projects
5 Rivington Street, Ground Floor
New York, NY
T: +1 212.967.2260
Bill Roberts is a writer based in London, and a PhD candidate at the Courtauld Institute of Art.
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