Highlighting Takreti’s latest body of work, the exhibition travels to Dubai after a highly successful debut at Ayyam Gallery’s Beirut outpost in September 2014, where a new monograph on the artist was simultaneously launched. 

LOL demonstrates Takreti’s recent innovations in painting through a methodical process that involves multiple stages of executing his compositions. In each work, the artist begins with appropriated or photographic imagery then creates a stencil that serves as the outline of his subjects as he renders an ‘etching’ on the sparse background of untreated canvas. Resembling facsimiles of advertisements or print media, Takreti isolates his figures with inanimate objects or minimally described settings as he emphasises the flattening of space that one associates with mass-produced imagery. Select areas of colour guide the viewer across the composition, amplifying the symbolism of a certain figure or object. Read more

About the Artist

Born in Beirut in 1964, Khaled Takreti is a leading Syrian artist whose Pop painting style has influenced a subsequent generation of contemporary Arab painters. Originally trained as an architect at the University of Damascus, he began exhibiting his work in the mid 1990s. Recognised for his innovative approach to portraiture, which merges a personal narrative in the form of a visual diary with explorations of the modern social image, he introduced a painting style that was without precedent in Syria. 

Based in Paris since 2004, Takreti has exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions and has been featured in biennials and art fairs such as the Alexandria Biennale and Art Hong Kong. His works are housed in the Syrian National Museum, the Jordanian National Gallery of Fines Arts, and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, among other private and public collections. 

His recent exhibitions include solo shows at Ayyam Gallery Beirut (2014, 2010); Ayyam Gallery London (2013); Ayyam Gallery Dubai DIFC (2012, 2010); and Ayyam Gallery Damascus (2009); and group surveys at the Gwangju Museum of Art, South Korea (2014); Institut des Cultures d’Islam, Paris (2014); Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha (2011); and Villa Emerige, Paris (2011). In 2012, Takreti was named among the 101 greatest living artists in France by Art Absolument.