Each one of Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim’s artworks is a fragment of an uplifting and vibrant world, complete with its own ecosystem, animals and even weather.
His papier-mache sculptures are eight-legged insects craning their necks to the sky or arboreal forms stretching in neon and pastel hues. Microbial beings spangle his canvases with polychromatic verve. His towers are covered in curious, barnacle-like creatures. His chairs are life forms in themselves.
Ibrahim has long been a staple at local art fairs and group exhibitions, but only slivers of his wondrous and fantastical world are typically presented at these events. In his solo exhibition at the Cultural Foundation Abu Dhabi, the artist reveals that world in its full, lively wonder.
Two Clouds in the Night Sky is a celebration of the contributions of a pioneering figure on the UAE’s contemporary arts scene. The exhibition, running until February 22, is not Ibrahim's first solo, but it does represent a full circle in the artist’s career.
Among the first works in the exhibition is an untitled 1989 painting. It is immediately clear that the work is distinct from the other pieces within the exhibition. The colour palette leans towards earthy tones, and the forms within the piece are depicted in dizzying swirls. The painting is dynamic, and though it is clear that it represents the artistic vision that Ibrahim would develop and perfect in the decades that followed, it is a wholly separate work.
Untitled (1989) was displayed in Ibrahim’s first solo exhibition in 1991, which was first shown at Qasr Al Thaqafa in Sharjah before being presented at the Cultural Foundation, marking his earliest major institutional recognition.
The piece is the oldest in Two Clouds in the Night Sky, and a rare example from that period. That isn’t surprising, given Ibrahim set fire to most of his works in the late 1990s.
As such, though the exhibition is sprawling and brings together a stunning diversity of work – from sculptures and paintings to installations – it would be amiss to call Two Clouds in the Night Sky a retrospective.
“It is more of a landmark show,” says Noor Al Mehairbi, who co-curated the show with Medyyah Al Tamimi. “I didn't really show his works from a strict chronological view. Instead, I highlighted his recent practice.”
The exhibition is organised into four sections, each reflecting a distinct mode through which Ibrahim engages with the natural world and the subconscious.
In Transit, the first and largest section, unfolds as an immersive environment in which papier-mache sculptures and paintings are gathered into a dense, forest-like formation.
The curation is shrewd, trying not to spotlight any singular work but rather communicating a larger, enveloping ecology of forms. Clouds, insects, trees and Ibrahim’s recurring cypher-like shapes appear as coexisting life forms, encouraging viewers to experience the space as a living landscape rather than a sequence of discrete objects.
“I wanted it to follow the same shape as one of his cypher forms, so that you could experience his work as a topography,” Al Mehairbi says. “You can experience it from the second floor, looking down or think of yourself as a body existing within these forms.”
The space also presents one of Ibrahim’s newest works, commissioned especially for the exhibition. An architectural intervention within the central space, Time/Place/Void comprises four colourful interconnected rooms inscribed with Ibrahim’s signature line drawings. Walking from room to room, being enveloped in reds and greens and blues, is a giddy and uplifting experience.
It is perhaps this installation that most succinctly distils Ibrahim’s practice. The linear markings recall the drawings he once produced alongside office work, discreetly folding them away in his desk, while the physical act of moving through the saturated spaces alludes to the travel that has shaped his more recent work.
“I think of it like you're entering other dimensions, or other portals into his mind, into his thought process, but also into our own internal geographies,” Al Mehairbi says.
The second section, Traces Made Visible, exclusively features Ibrahim’s monochrome works. It is through these that the artist pares his practice down to its most elemental forms. The section is simultaneously a palate, or rather palette, cleanser, allowing viewers to appreciate the vibrancy of the preceding and successive works, as well as a means to admire the more formal aspects of Ibrahim’s practice – his fantastical touch on papier-mache and his mastery of lines and the way they suggest movement.
Ibrahim’s Sitting Man series is at the heart of the third section, Shapeshifters. The core image of the series – of a man sitting with his head out of frame – originated from an accidentally cropped photograph of Ibrahim’s longtime friend and mentor, Hassan Sharif. Ibrahim has produced numerous versions of the painting.
“It is a meditative act,” Al Mehairbi says. “Repeating a line over and over again, or even with the Sitting Man series, repeating an image over and over again.”
The final section turns towards Ibrahim’s enduring relationship with land. Archival materials delve into projects such as Draped Trees (1996) and Khorfakkan Circles (2004), where Ibrahim intervened directly in the mountains of his native Khor Fakkan and used the landscape as an active artistic medium.
“He was doing land art even before he thought about it as an artistic category or a genre,” Al Mehairbi says. “It was about leaving a mark and letting the land speak.”
The section also presents recent sculptural works, including a newly commissioned interactive work. “It only seemed natural to have an interactive format,” AlMehairbi says. “How could you look at all these works and not feel the texture?”
