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Lot Essay
'I'm more interested in depicting the effects of war on people who live under these circumstances. So generally I don't show actual battle scenes in which there are soldiers, or fighting weapons'
(A. Alsoudani, quoted in 'Ahmed Alsoudani in Conversation with Robert Goff', Ahmed Alsoudani, exh. cat., Goff + Rosenthal, New York 2009, p. 61).
'My work is not about documentation. I'm addressing things that happened in the past but you can feel the present in them. And I'm not just commenting on Iraq but on experience that becomes universal'
(A. Alsoudani, quoted in 'Ahmed Alsoudani in Conversation with Robert Goff', Ahmed Alsoudani, exh. cat., Goff + Rosenthal, New York 2009, p. 62).
Executed with explosive gestural force, Ahmed Alsoudani renders We Die Out of Hand conveys with raw gestural passion and the intensity of a wartime prison scene. Using a muted palette of charcoal and past00s, the work exposes Alsoudani's richly layered working process. A rare large scale drawing, We Die Out of Hand is one of roughly ten works of this period and scale within the artists body of work. It retains the powerful immediacy of a sketch, while its majestic scale affirms it as an undeniable masterpiece within his oeuvre and situates it within the long canon of war paintings. A highly energetic, powerful piece, all manner of organic and inorganic forms are entwined in a visually restive surface which comes in drifts and fragments, being visible but not fully enfleshed. At times verging on the abstract, traces of human forms, sections of barbed wire and leg shackles are drawn in a visceral impression of activity.
Citing the great artists of the past such as Francisco Goya and Pablo Picasso, whose works provide the visual history of the atrocities of the 19th and 20th centuries, Alsoudani combines artistic references with combustive force. In We Die Out of Hand, the composition and hooded figures recall Picasso's masked women of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, yet here they are formed out of intense charcoal marks. It is testament to Alsoudanis brilliance that these references come together with a rarefied elegance, creating a work that develops contemporary history painting through its response to current events.
Completed in 2007, We Die Out of Hand is central to Alsoudani's career and development, coming shortly after his graduation with honours from the Yale School of Art. Outlining the visual language for which he is so celebrated, the large-scale early drawings are the genesis for almost all of his work that has come since. Completed in the midst of the second Gulf War, having fled his native Iraq to American during the First Gulf War, watching his country being torn apart from abroad was particularly poignant for the artist, a feeling he describes as 'being 'between' two places and two worlds [which] allows me to see and hear things from a different point of view' (A. Alsoudani, quoted in 'Ahmed Alsoundani in Conversation with R. Goff', Ahmed Alsoudani, exh. cat., Goff + Rosenthal, New York 2009, p. 61).
It is a result of seeing war from such a different perspective that enables Alsoudani to achieve such far ranging resonances in his work. He explained 'I'm not trying to make 'war paintings', but paintings about war. I'm more interested in depicting the effects of war on people who live under these circumstances. So generally I don't show actual battle scenes in which there are soldiers, or fighting weapons' (A. Alsoudani, quoted in 'Ahmed Alsoudani in Conversation with Robert Goff', Ahmed Alsoudani, exh. cat., New York, 2009, p. 61). We Die Out of Hand shows these drastic effects, with sanguine red spots in the lower right acting as a vivid reminder of the atrocities that take place in wartime. The work stands as a testimony, not to any identified war, but to the senseless ravages of all conflict. As Alsoudani has averred, 'my work is not about documentation. I'm addressing things that happened in the past but you can feel the present in them. And I'm not just commenting on Iraq but on experience that becomes universal (A. Alsoudani, quoted in 'Ahmed Alsoudani in Conversation with Robert Goff', Ahmed Alsoudani, exh. cat., Goff + Rosenthal, New York 2009, p. 62).
(A. Alsoudani, quoted in 'Ahmed Alsoudani in Conversation with Robert Goff', Ahmed Alsoudani, exh. cat., Goff + Rosenthal, New York 2009, p. 61).
'My work is not about documentation. I'm addressing things that happened in the past but you can feel the present in them. And I'm not just commenting on Iraq but on experience that becomes universal'
(A. Alsoudani, quoted in 'Ahmed Alsoudani in Conversation with Robert Goff', Ahmed Alsoudani, exh. cat., Goff + Rosenthal, New York 2009, p. 62).
Executed with explosive gestural force, Ahmed Alsoudani renders We Die Out of Hand conveys with raw gestural passion and the intensity of a wartime prison scene. Using a muted palette of charcoal and past00s, the work exposes Alsoudani's richly layered working process. A rare large scale drawing, We Die Out of Hand is one of roughly ten works of this period and scale within the artists body of work. It retains the powerful immediacy of a sketch, while its majestic scale affirms it as an undeniable masterpiece within his oeuvre and situates it within the long canon of war paintings. A highly energetic, powerful piece, all manner of organic and inorganic forms are entwined in a visually restive surface which comes in drifts and fragments, being visible but not fully enfleshed. At times verging on the abstract, traces of human forms, sections of barbed wire and leg shackles are drawn in a visceral impression of activity.
Citing the great artists of the past such as Francisco Goya and Pablo Picasso, whose works provide the visual history of the atrocities of the 19th and 20th centuries, Alsoudani combines artistic references with combustive force. In We Die Out of Hand, the composition and hooded figures recall Picasso's masked women of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, yet here they are formed out of intense charcoal marks. It is testament to Alsoudanis brilliance that these references come together with a rarefied elegance, creating a work that develops contemporary history painting through its response to current events.
Completed in 2007, We Die Out of Hand is central to Alsoudani's career and development, coming shortly after his graduation with honours from the Yale School of Art. Outlining the visual language for which he is so celebrated, the large-scale early drawings are the genesis for almost all of his work that has come since. Completed in the midst of the second Gulf War, having fled his native Iraq to American during the First Gulf War, watching his country being torn apart from abroad was particularly poignant for the artist, a feeling he describes as 'being 'between' two places and two worlds [which] allows me to see and hear things from a different point of view' (A. Alsoudani, quoted in 'Ahmed Alsoundani in Conversation with R. Goff', Ahmed Alsoudani, exh. cat., Goff + Rosenthal, New York 2009, p. 61).
It is a result of seeing war from such a different perspective that enables Alsoudani to achieve such far ranging resonances in his work. He explained 'I'm not trying to make 'war paintings', but paintings about war. I'm more interested in depicting the effects of war on people who live under these circumstances. So generally I don't show actual battle scenes in which there are soldiers, or fighting weapons' (A. Alsoudani, quoted in 'Ahmed Alsoudani in Conversation with Robert Goff', Ahmed Alsoudani, exh. cat., New York, 2009, p. 61). We Die Out of Hand shows these drastic effects, with sanguine red spots in the lower right acting as a vivid reminder of the atrocities that take place in wartime. The work stands as a testimony, not to any identified war, but to the senseless ravages of all conflict. As Alsoudani has averred, 'my work is not about documentation. I'm addressing things that happened in the past but you can feel the present in them. And I'm not just commenting on Iraq but on experience that becomes universal (A. Alsoudani, quoted in 'Ahmed Alsoudani in Conversation with Robert Goff', Ahmed Alsoudani, exh. cat., Goff + Rosenthal, New York 2009, p. 62).