Amman — Paintings are arranged across the walls of "Itlala Al-Weibdeh Gallery for the Arts," as part of the exhibition "Athar" (Trace) by Jordanian visual artist Kamal Abu Halawa, which opened under the patronage of Osama Madanat, CEO of the International Hotels and Commercial Markets Company, with former Prime Minister Dr. Omar Razzaz in attendance, alongside a select group of artists, intellectuals, and those interested in the visual arts.
اضافة اعلان
The works offer a visual experience that evokes memory, place, and the human figure, through color, line, space, and abstraction. The exhibition takes viewers into an experience that treats memory not as a ready-made image of the past, but as a shifting state, reshaped over time.
Among the works hanging in the gallery space, compositions vary in how much form is present and how close they come to reality: human features and references to place and nature appear in some, while details recede in others, giving way to spaces, masses, and color relationships.
Abu Halawa said that the "Athar" exhibition stems from his interest in what experiences, places, and people leave behind in memory, explaining that the artist doesn't recall the moment as it happened, but rather what remains of it within him, as feeling, image, and impression, then reshapes that in a visual language built on color, line, and space.
He added that memory is not a fixed reservoir of images, but a state that changes over time, which is why he doesn't seek to convey a scene as the eye sees it, but rather to evoke the feeling it left within him. From here, abstraction in his work takes on a function beyond mere formal reduction, becoming a means of reconstructing the scene and evoking the emotions and impressions hidden within the image.
For Abu Halawa, abstraction is not a formal end in itself, separate from the subject, but rather becomes a means of deconstructing the realistic image to reach what lies beyond its surface. Details don't disappear entirely, but transform into signs, features, and visual rhythms that allow the viewer to read the work through their own memory and experience, rather than receiving a complete image imposed by the artist.
This approach shows in the presence of the human figure within the works, where human features don't seem concerned with presenting specific individuals so much as evoking the idea of presence and absence, and the trace a person leaves in a place and in memory. Likewise, place doesn't appear as a separate geographic scene, but as a space where experiences, moments, and emotions accumulate.
Color occupies a pivotal place in constructing the visual scene, serving not merely an aesthetic function but contributing to creating a mood and establishing relationships between elements and spaces. Line intersects with it in defining movement and direction and linking parts of the composition, while texture and traces of working the surface add a sensory dimension that makes the material itself part of the idea of the trace.
In a number of works, the relationship between fullness and emptiness carries clear significance, as emptiness doesn't appear as a neutral space, but takes part in shaping meaning, giving surrounding elements a greater chance to emerge.
This relationship touches on the very nature of memory itself, built as it is on presence and absence, on images that remain clear and others that fade behind layers of time.
The significance of "Athar" lies in shifting the experience from recovering what happened to searching for what remains of it in memory. The artwork becomes a space between past and present, one through which the artist recovers what has settled within him, while the viewer reconstructs that trace according to their own experience.
A number of Jordanian visual artists and those interested in the visual arts who attended the exhibition's opening affirmed the importance of Abu Halawa's work, and the visual and intellectual presence it carries, noting that the works open up spaces for reflection on the relationship between people and their memory and place, offering a treatment built on reduction and abstraction while preserving its human dimension. The exhibition's title serves as a key to reading the experience: the "trace" is not limited to the mark something leaves in a place, but extends to the trace of people, experiences, and moments within the self.
From here, the works engage with what remains after a moment has passed, attempting to turn that remainder into a visual language open to reading and interpretation.
This vision gives the viewer an essential role in completing the meaning, as the works don't offer direct answers, but leave open spaces for reflection and for connecting what the viewer sees with what their personal memory holds. In this way, the experience isn't confined to the artist's memory, but passes into the viewer's memory, reproducing itself with every viewing.
Through "Athar," Abu Halawa continues his exploration of the possibilities of color, line, space, and texture, presenting an experience that turns memory into a visual material open to reconstruction. Between what the artist offers and what the viewer evokes, the exhibition becomes a space where individual memory intersects with place and feeling, and the trace itself becomes a visual and human subject open to multiple readings.
Resource: Al-Ghad. Reportig: Ahmad Al-Shawabkeh
