Visual Abstraction Inhabited by Suggestion
By Faisal Sultan
In 52 acrylic paintings on paper and canvas, in small and medium sizes, Mahmoud Amhaz presents in his latest exhibition at Darat Al-Mada a distinguished group of works shaped by the worlds of simplification, harmony, the beauty of Arabic letters and ornamentation, color experiments, and rich textural suggestions.
Mahmoud Amhaz raises more than one question about the way acrylic material can be used to create feeling and style. He does so in order to embody his vision of abstraction with an Eastern sensibility. He is among the artists who seek experimentation, innovation, and visual transformations that continuously renew themselves, moving away from imitation and direct repetition.
In his new works, painted between 1999 and 2003, Amhaz departs from the traditional principles of abstraction through the movement of variations, waves, repetition, intersections, and shifting spaces. Ancient traces of letters and script-like forms appear in his paintings, arranged across surfaces and open spaces through rhythmic lines that suggest movement and transition in their successive formations. This creates a shared visual scene in which colors gain transparency through their relationship between surface and depth, and through that he attempts to move beyond outward form toward inner meaning.
The linear and painterly structures are connected to color fields and their harmony. These relate to rhythms of light and the spaces of the surface, creating what may be called a new coherence within the language of color and form.
The painting approaches a different spatial atmosphere through the placement of vertical lines that shape the forms in their alertness, while horizontal lines reveal degrees of calm and extension.
Amhaz’s paintings evoke a visual world rich with traces, inscriptions, and signs that grow and dissolve in forms, shadows, and absences. Through this, horizontal and vertical axes contribute to building the architecture of empty space and its surfaces, charged with tension, proportion, spaciousness, and continuity of movement.
His paintings combine harmony and reflection in order to intensify visual effect, revealing forms immersed in light while their outer and inner energies continue to resonate.