Sushi Dreams, oil on canvas, 86½ x 78¾ ins
It is Happening Again, oil & wax pencil on paper
22 x 30 ins
"Well, I am an artist who happens to be Palestinian. Why should I be ashamed of something I feel like? I can try and make some strong imagery. I feel I have a responsibility to do these things. I don't want to be like a political artist, which I am not, but this is very strong imagery - it's a very strong subject."
It's been just over a decade since Jeffar Khaldi, the Palestinian/Lebanese-born, American educated, Dubai-based painter, first arrived in the UAE and began work on giant coruscating canvases, whose strength and dazzling emotive power remains pretty much unequalled throughout the UAE. Ten years on, and Khaldi is following a hit show in New York earlier this year with an exhibition of new work at the John Martin Gallery in London.
With steadily increasing interest from collectors on both sides of the Atlantic, impressive critical write-ups and a clear resonance with audiences worldwide, there seems to be, finally, a strong buzz about him. But the work remains as powerful, if rather more considered and formal than in years gone by. This is no bad thing - earlier Khaldis could be a genuinely draining experience. Unsurprisingly, he remains something of a cult taste amidst the glitz and baubles of Dubai. But there too, things are moving in his favour.
It's the emotive power of the work, borne of a tumultous early life, and a heritage that entwines him with the Palestinian and Lebanese causes, that fuels much of the misanthropic worldview in his work. But where this rage meets shrewd, erratically inspired use of disparate techniques and influences, a warped beauty lies. For Khaldi, who once swung over bridges, spraying graffiti in downtown Dallas during his college days, has learnt the art of raging correctly - eschewing harsh polemic for an emotional statement filtered through his mastery of technique. Pop, Expressionism, Arabic calligraphy conspire to create a style that is unique and distinctive.
"I am focusing more now, it is important," he points out, walking me through his warehouse studio, just after his recent Dubai show launched. "Still, once in a while I do a painting that is more spontaneous, but sometimes I study and think through more now. I try to show that my work is well thought through. I come up with all this different imagery, I do try and create my own little imagery that will attract the viewer, a new contemporary way to put it all together. As a contemporary artist, this is what I am doing these days, you can tell my style has changed since last year."
The Infinite and Beyond, oil on canvas
86½ x 78¾ ins
There's little celebration to be found in Khaldi's landscapes, strange, surreal conflations of political railing, sorrowing gazes, isolated freaks and mundane machinery. ( "I've been adding a lot of toilets in things recently," he comments. "It is a sign with my dissatisfaction with things. Everything's pretty fucked up, the toilet is like about shit, it's a symbol, you know?") No, rather, these densely-packed, colour-strafed surfaces resonate with variably controlled anger and bitter rage, returning time and time again to the state of Palestine, the ever-lurching crises in Lebanon and the plight of dispossessed and disaffected individuals everywhere.
"Money is evil, globalisation, everything. You know, the thing is [in Palestine], the story is not ending, it goes on daily. This has been going on 60 years, every day the same story. Every day, countries talk about human rights and everything... I get their number, I'm not an idiot. Maybe they can fool a lot of people. As an artist, sometimes these things come to me and I work with them to my advantage."
Know Before You Go, oil & wax pencil on paper, 22 x 30 ins
Another major component in the new show in London is his experiments with Arabic calligraphy. With the domestic market in the Middle East fast approaching saturation point with artists experimenting with increasingly desperation with age-old techniques and forms, Khaldi's gruff take on the tradition combines a genuine spatial mastery and sense of rhythm, with a subversiveness that immediately charges the work with a real edge.
"I'm so sick of all this calligraphy to be honest, in this Arab world, in the art scene, it's just calligraphy, calligraphy. Every artists is doing calligraphy now and selling so much - well, this is my calligraphy and I can calligraphy [sic] my own way!"
Nevertheless, gallerist John Martin is fervent in his praise. "His painting is always tightly woven and dense with imagery - the landscapes are incredibly complex and rich; no area is left unconsidered," he points out. "And similarly, in his calligraphic pieces have been a revelation to me - Jeffar's calligraphy canvases are as dense as the landscapes, the voids as vital and significant as the lettering, balancing and working together and allowing the lettering to exist in space rather than floating in nothingness."
Given the recent smoothing of Khaldi's career path,the imminent global fame and potential stardom, could one reasonably predict a mellowing, a softening of outlook, in months ahead?
"When I do my work, I try things, if it works I keep it, and then I stop. When I do my work, I keep it and it just makes it what they are, it makes more of it. More natural, I am not into tedious things, I have done another painting now, it's called 'Kill Them All'..."
Hold You in my Own Two Hands, oil on canvas
86½ x 78¾ ins
Jeffar Khaldi - With You, Without Ever Seeing You
Until 1 November
John Martin Gallery
London
Arsalan Mohammad is an art critic and freelance writer based in Dubai. Formerly Art Editor of Time Out Dubai, he was most recently Art Critic for The National newspaper in Abu Dhabi.
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