Presented in single, vast grid varying in size and display, ‘Throw Your Symbols on the Wall’ contains series of works on paper, combining paint, spray and print, representing new experimental and developmental advances in the Palestinian-born artist’s practice.
Generally sourcing images from current events in news media, films and YouTube clips, Khaldi’s simultaneously seductive and disrupting spectrum of scenarios and situations creates a juxtaposition which seem totally out of place and absurd, yet at the same time ineluctably right. Politics and ethics, humour and sensibility intersect on paper. Khaldi actively defies the norms of our media-dominated world and provides avenues for reflecting on the complex intersection of global disturbances and personal interpretation. Through works infused with a generous democratic and humanistic impulse, they aim to increase a community's sense of responsibility by pointing to the consequences and the effects of public engagement and expression.
Images of the Libyan rebels blend with stills from the movie ‘Mad Max’, whilst elsewhere, screengrabs of Arab protestors are combined with classic photographs from the punk rock era. Exploring the tension and antagonism between these seemingly disparate events, Khaldi evinces a way to discover means by which cultural, social and political relationships can be gauged, as well as challenged.
Meanwhile, ‘Just Magical’ is a series of screen-grabs from a YouTube clip in which an emotional British journalist is shown the city of Mecca from a rooftop, as the inhabitants heed the evening call to prayer. The journalist’s naked, uninhibited reaction struck Khaldi with its honesty and lack of pretense – two characteristics that have marked his own prodigious output over the years.
The images themselves reflect Khaldi’s ongoing fascination with the spectrum of contemporary media and the mechanics of reportage as well as the infinite repository of human experience to be found online.
Using sheets of A3 paper, Khaldi prepared a surface with repeated applications of spray paints, accreting rich and grainy textures and contours, building up layer upon layer of sprayed surfaces. These created a rich, metallic base upon which he printed his sourced images, after experimenting and altering its original colour composition. Edited down into sets, these were transferred directly onto the prepared sheets, via domestic printers, before being treated with further applications of spray and oil paint, then printed over again, repeating the process many times over. Through this accumulation of layers, Khaldi keeps a highlight on certain elements, forms and symbols creating a sense of depth, which disturbs the frames through which normal circuits of meaning are determined.
In ‘Throw Your Symbols on the Wall’, Jeffar Khaldi’s hybrid works have in common, a shared interest in the interaction and interchangeability of diverging realities, shot through with anarchy and discrimination. The continuum between his works is the surreal atmosphere rendered by the metallic striated surfaces, which suppress direct indicators for interpretation while highlighting the formal aesthetics of certain elements, often facial expressions, and the violence and bitterness of the reality Khaldi chooses to indicate. Complex associations between antagonistic events, through Khaldi’s innate subversion, leave the viewer entangled between contradictory feelings, where the formation of the meaning becomes larger than the sum of its parts.
Palestinian artist Jeffar Khaldi was born and raised in Lebanon and lived in Texas for many years before moving to Dubai in the late 1990’s. ‘Throw Your Symbols on the Wall’ is Jeffar Khaldi’s fourth solo show in Dubai and his second exhibition since Charles Saatchi’s ‘Unveiled: New Art From The Middle East’ in London and the Mathaf, Arab Museum of Modern Art’s ‘Told Untold Retold’ in Doha. He is also featured in the book ‘New Vision, Arab Contemporary Art in the 21st Century’, TransGlobe Publishing’s latest publication focusing on artists and institutions in the Arab world. Khaldi’s has exhibited internationally, in New-York and London with solo shows and in Germany for the group show ‘Jasmine’ held in 2011, as well as at Dar-al-Funoon gallery in Kuwait.
Gallery IVDE is proud to present ‘Throw Your Symbols on the Wall’, a new series of works by long-time Gallery IVDE collaborator Jeffar Khaldi, from Dec 13, 2011 to Jan 12, 2012.
