Samia Halaby – Fragments of time
SAMIA HALABY
Fragments of time
paintings & digital works
April 4 – August 28, 2024
hamburg
text downstairs II
From the mid-1980s onwards, the seriality and systematic approach in the computer-generated images have a transformative effect on her painting style: her paintings lose their center and become constructed by repetitions of single motifs that cover the surface, as if they could go on infinitely beyond the edge of the canvas. They also start showcasing the intense color palette that becomes hers. She composes her paintings in the same way she codes her kinetic works: constructing basic shapes, using primary bright colors, into indefinitely repeating patterns. Made of deconstructed, grouped, or overlapped patterns and shapes, the vibrancy of their yellows, blues, reds, or purples responds to the kinetic works shown on screens, highlighting the artist’s relentless quest to capture the essence of motion and of light - and its impression on our retinas.
By putting in dialogue the digital works of the 1980s with recent canvases form the 2020s, the exhibition underscores the links between the different phases in the artist’s practice. It also highlights her unwavering exploration of abstraction: Samia Halaby is a very particular, innovative figure within her generation of artists. In over six decades she constantly foregrounded works and techniques and, in retrospect, was working in the zeitgeist of her time throughout her career.
videos
Video file
Rainy Central Park, 1986, Kinetic painting coded on an Amiga computer, sound, 42s
Video file
Jump, 1989, Kinetic painting coded on an Amiga computer, sound, 2m 42s
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Weavings, 1989, Kinetic painting coded on an Amiga computer, 32s