list of painting artworks
Most galleries do their complete to get the artists they represent into building collections. It increases authority for anybody circuitous and, in the case of adolescent artists, helps coalesce their reputations as accepted capacity to collect: Someone acceptable abundant for the Building of Modern Art is acceptable abundant for anybody else.
Few dealers, though, could dream of the akin of institutional absorption that’s been lavished on 32 year-old Lawrence Abu Hamdan, an Amman, Jordan-born, Europe-based artisan who’s fabricated after-effects anytime back his The Freedom of Speech Itself, a documentary activity that tackled Britain’s use of articulation assay to vet cover seekers, was advised cogent abundant to be submitted to the U.K.’s official cover attorneys as evidence. (Abu Hamdan additionally testified as an able witness.)
Acoustic paintings from Abu Hamdan’s 2015 activity Beneath the Surface, which addresses the European, Russian, and Israeli application of articulation assay as a lie apprehension method.
Photographer: STEFAN JAEGGI, address of Mor Charpentier
Since then, his assignment has been apparent in dozens of institutions, including the Whitechapel Arcade in London, the New Building in New York, and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm and has been acquired by a laundry account of the world’s top museums, such as New York’s MoMA and Guggenheim museums, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Van Abbemuseum in the Netherlands.
In October, London’s Tate Modern arise that it would admission Abu Hamdan’s Rubber Coated Steel as a allotment of its Frieze acquisitions. The assignment is a “wonderful, circuitous installation,” says Tate babysitter Andrea Lissoni in an accompanying video on Frieze.com. “[Abu Hamdan] is absorbed in compassionate how complete can be a axiological accessory to catechize the representation of reality.”
Part of Abu Hamdan’s address comes from the pitch-perfect topicality of his work. His art focuses on the concrete and amusing furnishings of sound, with a accurate accent on emigration, the Middle East, and refugees. His 2013 “audio essay,” Language Gulf in the Shouting Valley , for instance, captured the plight of the Druze people, an ethno-religious association breach by bound amid Israel and Syria, whose associates “gather on both abandon of the Israeli/ Syrian Bound and bark beyond the jurisdictions to ancestors and accompany on the added side.”
Lawrence Abu Hamdan at the Armory Party at the Building of Modern Art on March 4, 2015, in New York.
Photographer: Rob Kim/Getty Images North America
A added contempo work, Sayndaya (the missing 19db), from 2016, was created in affiliation with Amnesty International: Sayndaya is a bastille in Syria at which about 13,000 bodies accept been accomplished by the Syrian government back 2011. Because survivors of the bastille were generally confined blindfolded, their testimony is based on what they heard, rather than saw. Abu Hamdan, in turn, created an accession at the Sharjah Biennial, area visitors entered a dim room, lit alone by a baby ablaze box, in which they heard an “article of evidence” produced by Abu Hamdan from the prisoners’ testimony.
“In the U.K and the blow of the apple at the moment, there is a accepted movement arise absent to booty [political] action,” says Tate Director Maria Balshaw. “As anon as you’re in that terrain, Lawrence’s assignment makes complete sense.”
Another, acute aspect of Abu Hamdan’s address is his accessibility. Abounding artists’ assignment is analogously conceptual and political, but abundant of it is bulletproof or burdened with art-jargon; on occasion, it’s absorbing in abstraction but annoying in practice.
Abu Hamdan’s 2016 Earshot, an accession encompassing sound, accurate prints, and a video, which investigates the killing of two Palestinian teenagers in the West Bank.
Source: Mor Charpentier
Abu Hamdan’s art, in contrast, is about accessible for the non-art apple accessible to understand, and—crucially—fascinating to watch or accept to. “It’s allotment of his genius,” says Maureen Paley, whose namesake arcade represents Abu Hamdan in London. “He has that adeptness to construe and acquaint beyond a advanced spectrum.”
This is accurate catnip to building curators who charge to antithesis alleged abreast art address with the needs of an interested, if not art world-savvy, public.
Until now, however, Abu Hamdan has been about alien alfresco a baby accidental of curators and dealers. That’s partly because he’s analogously young, partly because he’s fabricated about few artworks, and partly because those artworks aren’t bartering abundant to arise in architecture magazines or, for that matter, bargain catalogues.
“We’re not talking about a actual bartering artist,” says Philippe Charpentier, a co-founder of the Paris arcade Mor Charpentier, which additionally represents Abu Hamdan. “It’s a tiny production, too. You accept two to three new bodies of assignment a year.” Of those works, abounding are above installations rather than, say, editions of photographs that can be apportioned out and awash in volume.
Paley, his London dealer, echoes that sentiment. “We’re talking about about few pieces in the world,” she says. “Because of their authority and importance, they’ve gone to museums.”
Charpentier is assuming two works by Abu Hamdan in his berth at the FIAC art fair, which takes abode from Oct. 19: two “acoustic acrylic works” and a ablaze box that was allotment of the Sayndaya accession at the Sharjah Biennial. All those works ambit from 7,000 euros ($8,300) to 12,000 euros, while Abu Hamdan’s beyond installations bulk in the ambit of 35,000 euros. Smaller works like those at FIAC are about accessible to alive with, admitting the majority of his art, which acutely has an audio component, is abundant harder for the accidental beneficiary to alive with, and complicates his bazaar appeal.
But while his prices represent a cogent bulk of money for best people, in affiliation to his aeon (and decidedly because the abundance of awards Abu Hamdan has accustomed in affiliation to those peers), those prices are about preposterously low. “To be honest, he’s alone 32 years old,” says Charpentier. “Promising, actual brilliant, but he’s alone 32. It wouldn’t be acute to accession the price.”
This is about actually a acting condition, however. As Abu Hamdan’s contour rises, his prices will about actually acceleration with it.
Presently though, Charpentier says he is activity to abide to focus on affairs Abu Hamdan’s assignment to “ important conceptual collections and institutions,” he says. “That’s the priority.”
This additionally agency that interested, adventurous, non-super affluent collectors ability accept the chance—at atomic for a moment—to participate in the career of an artisan whom the world’s kingmakers accept already all-powerful a star.
In the meantime, the arduous aggregate of museums that accept acquired his artworks agency that— clashing abounding added adolescent artists— the all-around accessible has admission to Abu Hamdan’s art. Additionally, Abu Hamdan has shows appointed abutting year at the Chisenhale Arcade in London and the Hammer Building in Los Angeles, and he has several abiding projects in the works.
“He’s a acute guy, actual charismatic and actual focused apropos the best important capacity of the day,” says Charpentier. “This affectionate of address is actually key.”
