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In a new exhibition for the Foundry, artist Hashel Al Lamki explores the surreality that has shaped everyday life over the last year. A multidisciplinary artist from the Emirates and self-described visual thinker Hashel Al Lamki has found his artistic practice to be a blessing, particularly during the pandemic. Port Authority is a painted essay divided into 2 chapters where Al Lamki reflected on his time in New York (2007 – 2013) at the onset of the pandemic. 

 

Through his landscapes, he explored the romantic idea of living in a city and escaping to the countryside; “We all need to escape,” he explained in an interview with Nadine Khalil,  “We all need to find a space where we feel safe - what better place than nature.” Through this work, Al Lamki explores love, pain and fear, reimagined in natural and human-made forms. His compositions depict the unhinged momentum of natural forces, channelling them into gestural brushstrokes and unexpected hues. 

 

These intense backdrops exist in contrast to fragile flora and haunting architectural structures that dominate the foreground.  Al Lamki captures the repetition of everyday life through stacked amazon boxes, U-Haul trucks and stacked goods at a supermarket.  Compelled by his current circumstances, the artist processes his experience visually, initiating a painterly conversation with the viewer and reflection of our times.

 

-Giuseppe Moscatello

 

 

 

Port Authority: Painting Essay  By Hashel Al Lamki 

 

In the mist of the American honey pausing its rhythm, a forced moment of self isolation, the object confronts itself, thinking of the half verse in solitude. The threshold takes shape to transition into a new space & mathematics that allows eternal equilibria in its volume.

 

Today is today,  even tomorrow.

 

Similarly, to the soul we occupy, this man-made reality was placed as a page holder,  a holder to stop, to process and to reset. Colored hues of memories rise on the harbour sailing towards the American dream hustler. 

 

The wild is wild

 

Above

 

A collective suburban memories gather to comfort the adjourned traveller. The earthy smell, a firey autumn, a vivid ray of polkadots memories, adjusting to the rate of flow.

 

Casablanca

 

On the journey to comprehend the past through the sequence of events that took place and regardless of where we were then, or how we enjoyed reaching to Cobleskill; we hunt for certain meanings to open a door of possibilities to nothingness. Joy is strived for, not for the moment of joy itself, but for the potential possibilities of conscious realizations of that moment itself.

 

Between heaven and dreamland