Press text

In 1978 he participated in the International Art Exhibition in Solidarity with Palestine, and shortly after moved to Saudi Arabia where he spent the best part of the 1980s. Initially commissioned to create large-scale public sculptures in Jeddah, Tabuk and Riyadh, El Rayess was also an advisor to the Jeddah Open Air Museum. For several years, faced with the landscapes of Saudi, he painted deserts, repeatedly, compulsively, an almost mystical, meditative exercise that turned dry lands into abstract, sculptural, color fields. 

Wherever he went, Aref El Rayess was associating with individuals and groups that were at the avant-garde of artistic production; and managed to capture through his work the zeitgeist of the place and time. The exhibition ultimately reveals the multiple facets of an oeuvre which has been absent for too long from the regional and international scenes.