 Mohammad Joha’s paintings take their starting point from a series of art workshops that he has undertaken with children and are the culmination of several years of research. The artist’s fascination with how children represent themselves, their feelings and their surroundings is an important source of inspiration for his paintings. The works constitute a significant departure from academic pictorial representation that was part of the artist’s training. The artist suggests that his aim in this series has been to express simplicity through colour, line and form. The artist endeavors to capture the world through the eyes of a child, to return a period of naivete and un-learn the way we are taught to depict others and ourselves. The artist uses the form of stick people commonly found in children’s drawings to represent each child and the spontaneous colour mixtures that children use when painting. Yet the parody of the exhibition is that many of the faces appear grief stricken and burdened. There is an overwhelming sense of melancholy and sadness in these portraits of children for whom it appears that innocence has been lost. This is only too true for many of the children who have witnessed the current intifada.
In this exhibition Hazem Harb
presents his contemplation, on an everyday object from his immediate
surroundings: a flower pot of herbs. The artist suggests that items
that we often forget to acknowledge can become a source of
inspiration in when we rediscover their inherent qualities. Through
his continuous painting and drawing of the plant we witness a
process of abstraction that arises from the study of an organic
form. The series is unassuming and intimate, revealing the way that
artists work and interpret familiar objects from their environment.
Both artists explore avenues towards abstraction with particular
emphasis on line and colour. Mohammad Joha takes the route of
returning to representations of children, while Hazem Harb chooses
the genre of still life.
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