Under Construction: Hamra Abbas | Mounir Fatmi | Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim | Nadia Kaabi-Linke | Driss Ouadahi | Nathaniel Rackowe

Ouadahi’s Laisse Béton (Let It Go) is part of a series modelled on impressions of Dubai, from various photographs meshed with images from his memory.  Ouadahi takes as his subject matter the built environment of urban alienation - sterile modernist public housing developments, wire netting and underground passageways. He paints works of paradoxical beauty using this stark urbanism as his springboard. Persistent in each of his works are his core concerns of geometric abstraction, transparency and the implication of the veil.  His large formal landscapes are montages of spaces and places he knows, with human-scale details often omitted.

Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim presents a selection of assemblage and papier maché wall sculptures that stem from his Line series of paintings. Executed in black and white the works recall road markings, derived from his number system based on tally charts. Ibrahim’s interest in the ‘line’, black or white typographical lines that are reminiscent of ancient cave markings or ancient numeric systems, can be traced back to the early 1990s, and derives from his fascination with the rustic landscape of his home environment and the changes that have come about through its urbanisation. The artist’s early childhood memories are of markings on the external walls of homes in his hometown where single lines were made to indicate the number of water bottles delivered by the local water supplier. Leaving an imprint on his memory, these repeated lines have become the backbone of Ibrahim’s practice, emerging regularly in his paintings, drawings and sculptures.

Hamra Abbas’ series of marble ‘drawings’ entitled Open Cube: After LeWitt appropriate LeWitt’s Incomplete Open Cube drawings in which he identified 122 unique variations of an incomplete cube. It was Abbas’ encounter with these works at LeWitt’s emblematic retrospective at MASS MoCA in 2016 that provided her with new insights into her own practice, specifically with regard to his treatment of the cube and his explorations of colour.  Abbas draws upon this intimate encounter, incorporating her understanding and experience into her own personal language - inlaying the broken forms with jet black marble, adding density to the shapes and reinstating her fascination with the colour black.

Nadia Kaabi-Linke’s Jins Al Latif  (The Gentle Sex) is made from hundreds of sets of manicure and pedicure instruments, and arranged as an inscription in square Kufic (an ornamental Arabic script often found in monumental architecture). Spelling out in Arabic the gentle sex or ‘kind sex’, it comments on the implausibility of such hazardous steel instruments being used for beauty care, and the efforts required to construct and maintain appearance.