Barbara Walters chats with Forward Syria
Swaying between art and seduction
Discussing monetary policy with the man in charge
Where the earth screams in horror
02/13/2011 - Issue 48
Live critics invited to attend as painting goes digital
Syria’s biggest selling artist alive, Safwan Dahoul, will paint his next major work with each brush stroke broadcast in a live video stream on the Internet.
It will be the first time that a major Syrian artist has exhibited both the finished work and the creation of that work.
The idea for the project came about when Dahoul sat down with Khaled Samawi, the owner of Ayyam Gallery. Dahoul wanted a large space to work on a huge 6-meter canvas, and Samawi suggested he work directly in the gallery, with visitors able to come and see him painting. From that point, it was a small step to take to decide to install cameras and broadcast the event on the Internet.
“It is a new idea to see a Syrian artist work in an open space with cameras broadcasting on the Internet while he is painting. I hope to paint three works.”
Dahoul’s ongoing project, ‘Still Dreaming’ is now 30 years old. The latest addition to the collection is a 10 painting large-scale series currently being exhibited at Ayyam Gallery Dubai DIFC from January 17 to February 28.
Dahoul was born in Hama in 1961, to a large, middle class family. His father, who worked as a driver, sent his youngest son to the city’s Plastic Art Center where Dahoul’s hands and eyes began to play with colors and painting.
“When I was studying and training at the Art Center, there was no problem, but when I decided to go to the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus, my family stood against me,” Dahoul said.
But he was determined to finish his studies and, after graduating top of his class in 1983, went on to receive a scholarship to study abroad from the Ministry of Higher Education in 1987, obtaining a doctorate from the Higher Institute of Plastic Arts in Mons, Belgium in 1997.
The first time Dahoul exhibited his paintings was at the Ministry of Culture’s annual Fall Exhibition in 1985. Later, he exhibited his paintings at solo and group exhibitions throughout Syria, the Middle East, Europe, and the United States.
Dahoul, like all Syrian artists, exhibited at the best Damascus art galleries such as A’ashtar, Alsayyed, Rainbow, and others, until Ayyam Gallery was founded in 2006. Ayyam gave him a new opportunity to work and exhibit, he said.
“Ayyam Gallery came up with a new idea, it’s old in the rest of the world but new for us, in Syria’s artistic life,” he said. “Ayyam deals with 20 artists who represent different generations and schools of art. They [the gallery] signs contracts with them to show their works at their galleries in Damascus, Beirut, Dubai and Cairo.”
In 2009 his painting, ‘Dream,’ set a record for the highest price paid for an artwork by a living Syrian artist, when it was sold for $140,500 at Dubai’s Christie’s auction house in 2009.
