Art021 Shanghai 2025
Overview
Mohamed Melehi, 'Moucharabieh in the Night', 2020, Acrylic on canvas, 150 x 120 cm.
Booth W28, West Hall | Main Galleries
Shanghai Exhibition Centre, Shanghai, China
Lawrie Shabibi is pleased to announce its return to Art021 Shanghai 2025 (Booth W28), presenting a group exhibition featuring artworks by Hamra Abbas (b. 1976, Kuwait), Mohamed Melehi (b.1936 - 2020), Timo Nasseri (b. 1972, Germany), Farhad Ahrarnia (b. 1971), Mandy El-Sayegh (b. 1985, Malaysia), and Asad Faulwell (b. 1982, USA).
Spanning painting, sculpture, and mixed media, the presentation highlights the diverse practices of six contemporary artists whose works engage with themes of landscape, cosmology, materiality, and cultural narrative. From meditations on the transformation of natural environments to explorations of geometry, craft, and memory, the selection reflects the span of the gallery’s program and the distinct formal languages of each artist.
Hamra Abbas’ Aerial Studies confronts the impact of climate change on the remote landscape of Skardu in northern Pakistan. Developed from aerial photographs taken by the artist on a flight to the region, the series translates her observations of glacial melt, rising temperatures, and newly formed lakes into layered compositions. The works embody both the beauty and the fragility of a place undergoing rapid transformation, framing the landscape as a record of environmental and temporal change.
In contrast, Mandy El-Sayegh’s practice reflects an engagement with the body, language, and systems of knowledge. Her work Reverse White Ground (laser grid co-ordinates) layers pigments in vibrant reds, purples, and iridescent hues, punctuated by silkscreened renderings of maps and grids. Through these juxtapositions, El-Sayegh explores the insertion of the body into abstraction, creating surfaces where personal and cultural registers intersect.
For Moucharabieh in the Night, Mohamed Melehi presents a striking work from his Moucharabieh series. Resonant with the bold graphic compositions he pioneered in the early 1970s, the painting reflects his iconic wave motif, an enduring symbol of movement and transformation. The wave, for Melehi, shifts continuously in meaning: it may suggest the curve of the human figure, the outlines of water, the rhythm of magnetic signs or electronic signals, and, when vertical, the flicker of a flame. In this series, the motif is distilled to its essentials, rendered as all-over diagonal compositions that emphasize the curved line, hyper-graphic intensity, and a refined chromatic palette.
Asad Faulwell similarly draws from diverse visual traditions, incorporating decorative motifs inspired by Islamic textiles, architecture, mosaics, illuminated manuscripts, and art history. His practice sits at the intersection of post-colonial modernity, exploring overlooked histories through richly layered, patterned compositions.
Farhad Ahrarnia’s practice, by contrast, is rooted in the craft tradition of khatam, an Iranian micro-mosaic technique with a history spanning over six centuries. By repurposing this meticulous marquetry as a mark-making device, Ahrarnia bridges the ornamental with the modernist. Thin filaments of wood and metal are assembled into geometric patterns, which the artist then integrates into compositions that echo seminal works of twentieth-century abstraction. In doing so, he situates a traditional craft language within global discourses of modernism and constructivism.
Geometry is also at the heart of Timo Nasseri’s One and One series. Inspired by muqarnas, which are ornamental honeycomb structures found in Islamic architecture, Nasseri translates this architectural form into hand-drawn diagrams. Rendered in white ink on black paper, each drawing begins from a single point and unfolds outward into infinite combinations of geometric patterns. Mathematical formulas inscribed within the works reinforce their conceptual grounding, while their meticulous execution establishes a sense of meditative rhythm and spatial vastness.
Together, the presentation highlights the variety of approaches that define contemporary practice across the Middle East and beyond. From ecological reflection to formal inquiry, these works chart a terrain where local materials and histories intersect with global narratives of abstraction, memory, and transformation.
