Hard Edges
Date:
Saturday 17 Feb, 2024
-
Thursday 01 Aug, 2024
Time:
10:00 a.m.
-
07:00 p.m.
Venue:
Block E, 2nd Floor, Maraya Art Centre, Al Qasba,
Sharjah,
United Arab Emirates
Hard Edges is Emirati artist Khalid Al Banna's first institutional solo show in the UAE. The exhibition explores collage-based constructions created from daily observations of an ever-changing home surrounded by various landscapes and enriched by the artist’s vivid imagination.
As a trained architect, Khalid Al Banna views the world from a different lens, revealing layers of simplified geometric forms intersecting and overlapping - stacks of squares, whirling circles, and cones in a constant state of transformation. His process starts with a blank surface, using scraps of black-coloured paper upon which he gradually builds compositions with endless permutations. Most commonly, abstract patterns repeat themselves, joined by elongated angles and intertwined geometric forms, often set against stark white backgrounds.
Together, they create narratives that speak of a shifting landscape, often referring to his childhood in Sharjah and his perception of architectural housing in the 1980s. In addition, many fantastical forms and creatures are invented here. The viewer can observe bird-like shapes amidst imaginative figures that act as inhabitants of Khalid Al Banna’s abstract worlds. Frequent relocations over the years of the artist’s childhood speak of an evolving landscape that is perpetually deconstructed and reconstructed.
The exhibition Hard Edges also marks a shift in Khalid Al Banna's practice as he experiments with scale and three-dimensionality for the first time whilst maintaining his distinctive artistic signature. The dormant architect takes centre stage as Al Banna pulls his idiosyncratic forms out of the flat-surfaced architectural blueprint and reimagines them into reliefs and three-dimensional sculptures.
