From September 20 until October 30, Ayyam Gallery, Beirut is pleased to present ‘Inner-Self’, a solo exhibition of Kais Salman, a prominent member of a young generation of artists that is currently transforming Syrian painting. Ever evolving, this new body of work presents a departure from his previous ‘Fashion Series’.

Salman depicts his subjects with large, tapered oval faces with accentuated nose bridges, prominent almond-shaped eyes and full lips, carried atop undersized voluptuous bodies. Viewed from a frontal perspective, his subjects lack their upper extremities, thereby accentuating their bare, curvaceous forms. Evocative of ancient alabaster sculptures which have lost their arms and heads over time and even more redolent of the rotundness of fertility statues, Salman’s paintings deliberately suggest the fecundity of his feminine subjects.

Nearly monochromatic with crimson accents, Salman’s subjects are portrayed in a much more humane manner and the vacuousness of the fashion-motivated figures is replaced with the multifacetedness of women. The Bride depicts a disrobed woman with a wedding veil falling behind her. Though she appears nude and vulnerable to our gaze and objectified by it, the revealed musculature of one of her legs reinforces that she is more than an object to gaze and desire. Heavy Fuel is a work composed of five canvases that outlines the diversity of character in women with references to religion, awareness of objectification, self-protection of their modesty, and their live-giving character. Yet these women also appear as dangerous creatures as their corporeal vulnerability is countered by a holstered dagger or gun in a lace garter, an accoutrement popularly worn during a wedding ceremony. Continuing the line of investigation into the many facets of his subject, Salman has also created a large composite painting of thirty to forty small drawings revolving around a central portrait as well as paintings composed of a multitude of smaller figural sketches.