AIDA Nederland

Expositie Le plaisir
20 juni – 28 augustus 2010

Galerie BIHP
Keizersgracht 335, Amsterdam
Opening 20 juni 2010, 15.00 uur

De expositie 'Le plaisir' bestaat uit schilderijen van:
Jamal Khamis
Quirine Kemper en
Bilal Chahal.

Jamal Khamis was born in Aroub, and he has lived for more than twenty years in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He studied art at the University for the Arts in Frankfurt, Germany. He has exhibited in The Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, France, Sweden and Jordan. He has also taken part in group exhibitions in the United States, Canada, Japan, Brasil, Argentina and Australia. He is mentioned in The Middle East Encyclopeadia (1989). As the sole Jordanian artist, he is included in the world atlas The World Art Collection (2002). Work of Khamis is included in the collections of several museums, royal families and private collectors. Khamis has also published collections of poems. The Amsterdam based television stations MTV and AT 5, and Dutch national television have aired documentaries about Khamis. A documenrtary made by the BBC was shown at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. Articles on Khamis and his work have been published in newspapers and magazines in the Netherlands, Germany, the United States, Japan and the Middle East.

For the better part of his life, Jamal Khamis has explored the depths of his psyche through art. As a child he was always busy drawing: at school he sat dreaming, scratching on the bench, observing people. Through experience he discovered the world. By chance, while pursuing a runaway goat, he discovered that there was more than the village he lived in, the valley, the mountains and the sky above. He saw the Dead Sea. After a family visit in Jerusalem, he wondered where the end was. Did the world never end, he asked himself. History and geography lessons took him out of his confusing isolation. He began developing his artistic talents when he started making drawings and paintings for the sports club of the village.

Quirine Kemper:
"You can touch an artwork, but it will always be untouchable, an eternal riddle.

Don't fear the canvas
be the canvas
Don't fear the colours
be the colours
Don't fear the brush
be the brush
Don't fear your emotions
let them be
be naked
exist

When I paint the world around me fades away and I have the feeling that I float. I draw from the depths of my soul. A piece of my feelings unfolds on the canvas. Exhausted, I put my brush down, I take a step back and look. A door can only be opened when you have the key, Jamal Khamis was my key to open the door of being an artist."
 
Bilal Chahal Grew up in Tripoli, Lebanon before moving to Curaçao in 1990. Then in 1998 moved to St. Martin and in 1999 to Amsterdam. Chahal's physical paintings combine layered expanses of semi opaque colour, with scratched and superimposed line. Through the process of layering deep earthy colours, he creates a physical sense of texture by the visible history of the paint applied. This also enables him to create an illusion of depth and controlled balance throughout the whole composition. Scratching frenetic line through the surface to reveal and invent a line from pure colour.