2 July - 31 August 2026

"I see my practice as a visual dialogue where history, memory, and contemporary experience interact with one another. For me, painting is not simply about creating images it is about re-examining existing imagery, transforming it, and generating new meanings through it. Through contemporary painting, I explore the emotional and psychological layers that images accumulate over time.

I work across different mediums particularly charcoal, acrylic, and mixed media on canvas because each medium carries its own energy and visual language. Charcoal, for me, represents memory and shadow, while acrylic introduces intensity, movement, and disruption. Through the combination of these materials, I create surfaces that feel both raw and controlled at the same time.

My recent body of work, “Contemporary Echoes,” is based on transforming the imagery of Western Old Masters into a contemporary context. Rather than directly reproducing classical paintings, I deconstruct, distort, and reconstruct them so they can exist within today’s visual and cultural environment in a new form. In my work, historical imagery appears like memory itself sometimes clear, sometimes fragmented, and sometimes almost erased. This transformation is not only a stylistic process for me, but also a conceptual investigation into how historical images continue to survive within our collective consciousness.

Experimentation with the physical surface of the canvas is an essential part of my practice. Layering, scraping, erasing, and rebuilding are central to my process. I want each work to carry evidence of its own making traces of time, unfinished marks, and hidden histories. For me, painting is never a fixed image; it is an evolving space where destruction and creation exist simultaneously.

My work also engages with ideas of identity, cultural inheritance, and image consumption. In today’s hyper-visual and digitally saturated world, we constantly exist among reproduced images, and I am interested in exploring how classical visual language can still generate new meanings within a fragmented contemporary reality.

Ultimately, my practice is not about preserving the past, but about reawakening it. Through my paintings, I aim to create a bridge between history and contemporary reality a space where familiar imagery can re-emerge in a new emotional and conceptual form." - ASHKAL

2 May - 30 June 2026

François-Auguste-René Rodin (12 November 1840 – 17 November 1917), known as Auguste Rodin was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past. He was schooled traditionally, took a craftsman-like approach to his work, and desired academic recognition, although he was never accepted into Paris's foremost school of art.

Sculpturally, Rodin possessed a unique ability to model a complex, turbulent, deeply pocketed surface in clay. Many of his most notable sculptures were roundly criticized during his lifetime. They clashed with the predominant figure sculpture tradition, in which works were decorative, formulaic, or highly thematic. Rodin's most original work departed from traditional themes of mythology and allegory, modelled the human body with realism, and celebrated individual character and physicality. Rodin was sensitive of the controversy surrounding his work, but refused to change his style.