Artist Falah Alsaedi .. The Poet of Colors
By Saleem Suzah
01 / 01 / 2015
I understand how risky it is when writing about a brilliant artist like the Iraqi-born
artist Falah Alsaedi. However, I want to participate in and contribute to the adventure of his
rising trajectory as a global contemporary visual artist. I want to translate those aesthetic
impressions that I get every time I take a look at his work. I want to translate them into
words that are hopefully able to say what my eyes feel.
I met Mr. Alsaedi a year ago, for the first time. He had just arrived in Arizona with
his Babylonian heritage and its scent of Hanging Gardens. He is a quiet artist who loves
silence and hates cackle. He speaks colors, only the creation’s ear can hear.
I am now looking at an incredible group of his paintings. They were painted by a
poet’s brush, not by a traditional painter. He is a doctor that treats the symptoms of beauty
by lines and colors. He may consider himself as an expressionist artist, but I see numerous
artistic doctrines in his paintings. I see German Expressionism mixed with Picasso’s
rosiness under the strokes of Van Gogh’s painterly brush. I see them in mechanical
refractions that are similar to Duchamp’s terrific imaginative works. I see all these
characteristics in a colored masterpiece that is hard to be classified in a previous specific
artistic style. This is Alsaedi’s style.
Although I am not an art critic, I can read what his canvas writes. I can feel the
beauty that is made by his creative brush. Words run away from me and I get shocked every
time I try to untie the creative talismans in his work. How this man has all these abilities to
employ those colored spaces and put them together to be looked like human figures
overlapped with animal bodies sometimes! It is not just that, Alsaedi masterly borrowed the
dramatic theatricality from the Baroque period in some of his paintings, specifically those
that show women dancing in lithe poses. Yes, his colors were not as bright as those in
Baroque art, but he competes in presenting the theatrical excitement as he picks up
instantaneous moves of those lovely women. It looks as if someone cuts an instantaneous
scene from a long performance activity. This is a Baroque characteristic that Alsaedi
borrowed from the European history to use it in his works today.
Alsaedi is now preparing for his first personal exhibition in his new homeland in
with Phoenix Institute of Contemporary Art (phICA) in a pop-up gallery fashioned by
repurposing a retired shipping container in the heart of the Downtown Phoenix arts and
culture district. The exhibition opens on Friday, December 19th, 2014.
Alsaedi is now a pure Iraqi view on the threshold of world stage. He deserves it. He
deserves to be called “the poet of colors”.
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By Saleem Suzah
01 / 01 / 2015
I understand how risky it is when writing about a brilliant artist like the Iraqi-born
artist Falah Alsaedi. However, I want to participate in and contribute to the adventure of his
rising trajectory as a global contemporary visual artist. I want to translate those aesthetic
impressions that I get every time I take a look at his work. I want to translate them into
words that are hopefully able to say what my eyes feel.
I met Mr. Alsaedi a year ago, for the first time. He had just arrived in Arizona with
his Babylonian heritage and its scent of Hanging Gardens. He is a quiet artist who loves
silence and hates cackle. He speaks colors, only the creation’s ear can hear.
I am now looking at an incredible group of his paintings. They were painted by a
poet’s brush, not by a traditional painter. He is a doctor that treats the symptoms of beauty
by lines and colors. He may consider himself as an expressionist artist, but I see numerous
artistic doctrines in his paintings. I see German Expressionism mixed with Picasso’s
rosiness under the strokes of Van Gogh’s painterly brush. I see them in mechanical
refractions that are similar to Duchamp’s terrific imaginative works. I see all these
characteristics in a colored masterpiece that is hard to be classified in a previous specific
artistic style. This is Alsaedi’s style.
Although I am not an art critic, I can read what his canvas writes. I can feel the
beauty that is made by his creative brush. Words run away from me and I get shocked every
time I try to untie the creative talismans in his work. How this man has all these abilities to
employ those colored spaces and put them together to be looked like human figures
overlapped with animal bodies sometimes! It is not just that, Alsaedi masterly borrowed the
dramatic theatricality from the Baroque period in some of his paintings, specifically those
that show women dancing in lithe poses. Yes, his colors were not as bright as those in
Baroque art, but he competes in presenting the theatrical excitement as he picks up
instantaneous moves of those lovely women. It looks as if someone cuts an instantaneous
scene from a long performance activity. This is a Baroque characteristic that Alsaedi
borrowed from the European history to use it in his works today.
Alsaedi is now preparing for his first personal exhibition in his new homeland in
with Phoenix Institute of Contemporary Art (phICA) in a pop-up gallery fashioned by
repurposing a retired shipping container in the heart of the Downtown Phoenix arts and
culture district. The exhibition opens on Friday, December 19th, 2014.
Alsaedi is now a pure Iraqi view on the threshold of world stage. He deserves it. He
deserves to be called “the poet of colors”.
Back to the articles page