Lot 2: AHMED ALSOUDANI

AHMED ALSOUDANI B. 1975 UNTITLED oil, acrylic, ink and gesso on canvas 182.9 by 213.4cm. 72 by 84in. Executed in 2007.

London, The Saatchi Gallery, Unveiled: New Art from the Middle East, 2009, n.p., no. 16, illustrated in colour

Robert Goff and Cassie Rosenthal, Eds., Ahmed Alsoudani, 2009, pp. 44-45, illustrated in colour

Mehr Gallery, New York

"I've been living with these moments all these years. This is what I mean when I say my work is not about documentation. I'm addressing things that happened in the past but you can fell the present in them."

The artist in: Robert Goff and Cassie Rosenthal, Eds., Ahmed Alsoudani, Ostfildern 2009, p. 62

Ahmed Alsoudani's tremendously striking and unforgettable work Untitled is a highly complex painting replete with the vestiges of memory and experience, as well as an immediacy that very much broadcasts the here and now. Born in Baghdad in 1975, fleeing to Damascus aged 20, studying in the States at Yale, and now living and working in Berlin, Alsoudani's work fuses modes of figuration and abstraction to report on the complexities of today's world, informed by a uniquely multi-faceted internationalist experience. His paintings are the product of a rigorous working method, beginning by stretching the canvas himself, so that it is tight enough to endure the resistance of his vigorous drawing, which is in turn adjusted by overpainting in gesso before layers of acrylic and oil are applied to build up sumptuous paint layers. Representing the inaugural presentation of Alsoudani's work at auction, Untitled is a remarkable painting that embodies the salient tenets of this exciting artist's output.