Harlequin Shapes in Space at Beyond Colour

AMMAN – A little girl in a pink dress and pink sunglasses on her head runs around the gallery, a humble and intimate space. “Here, I see an elephant”, she announces pointing at strokes and splatters of paint. “And here, there’s a fox!” She moves on to the next painting. She sees a fish, a cow, a squirrel and even a woman hiding behind a wall of colours.

This is the opening of Jordanian artist Fadi Haddadin’s new solo exhibition at Jacaranda Images titled Beyond Colour. What lies beyond the colours is not what strikes the viewer when they walk in, but the colours themselves. An explosion of confetti-like acrylics on paper.

Viewers interacting with Haddadin’s work at Jacaranda Images.

There are more than 40 new exhibited works in the exhibition. The viewer is welcomed into the gallery by a long and cascading blue work on paper hanging on the glass window. As viewers walk through the doors, they meet smaller works coming in groups of twos, threes, fours and sixes. Unlike the little girl who sees concrete images behind the abstractions, I see feelings. I see tranquility in the blue and anger in the red. Another young attendee, only 12 years of age, says the red actually reminds her of Love. Perhaps what we see in the colours is a projection of our own psyche. Perhaps it reflects as much of us as it does of the artist. The work on display at the exhibition is a continuation of Haddadin’s practice as it develops into the abstract. It follows his recent solo exhibition in Istanbul.

Viewers interacting with Haddadin’s work at Jacaranda Images.

“Haddadin hangs free shapes of color in mid space,” says renowned Jordanian architect and artist Ammar Khammash. He continues: 

Each of us look at these paintings and builds up a different space and order, according to some deep primordial visual perception process, possibly from our evolutionary past and survival strategies. These works represent a generative approach to art, where the artist gives works that are tools for us to build up our own results, in our deep visual and awareness conation. Fadi Haddadin stirs some visual/mental instincts we didn’t know that we had.

New work by Fadi Haddadin as seen at Jacaranda Images.

Indeed, the shapes are somewhat reminiscent of a jungle, and there is an urgency, like the impulse for survival, to scan the landscape and determine what lurks within it. In this new body of work, Haddadin experiments with different colour schemes. Many of the works possess solid monochromatic palettes of blues and pinks. Others are rid of bright colours and hide either in an achromatic grayscale or within the colours of army camouflage patterns. “These paintings make me want to look for what’s hidden behind,” one of the attendees tells artmejo.

Commenting on the exhibition title, Haddadin said:

I always shy away from titles which are so direct that they force the viewer to go to a specific place. I want everyone to have their own space of exploration. Beyond Colour is about the colours that you don’t see behind the painting. I always have four or five layers of colours on top of each other that the viewer can’t see.
I always look inwards. I search my own emotions when I work. The process involved feelings, emotions, thoughts, a mixture of different things that exist inside me, as well as my own memories. Any piece is the accumulation of all the works that have come before it. The final result depends on the viewer.

Panoramic view of Beyond Colour as seen at Jacaranda Images.

Haddadin was born in 1989 in Amman. He studied Fine Arts at the University of Jordan and proceeded to participate in exhibitions and workshops locally and abroad. Beyond Colour reflects his departure from shapes and his experimentation with colours as main storytellers. Beyond Colour is on view at Jacaranda Images throughout September and closes on the 30th.