| Description |
NOTE: THIS ARTIST'S BOOK IS HELD IN BALTIC ARCHIVE NOT THE LIBRARY. Please email archive@balticmill.com for an appointment or see staff.
Diana Al-Hadid's sculptures, drawings, and panels merge figuration and abstraction. Her art involves a wide range of materials—from steel and fiberglass to gold leaf and pigment—and spans different eras by making reference to historic models or integrating them into its architectonic structures. Diana Al-Hadid's works result from an open creative process. Her revisions and reconfigurations toe the fine line between fidelity to the historic sources and a more liberal recasting: "These references do not always remain perfectly intact, sometimes I lose the trace altogether, but a small gesture remains. (…) What I have learned from starting with these paintings is that so little is needed to suggest a character or a scene, such is our familiarity with the tilt of Mary's neck for example. Other times, the scene is obscured and what remains is a few faded arches of an architectural compound that once was highly detailed and populated. I am interested in how much an image can be 'stressed' before it begins to forget its origins." (Diana Al-Hadid)
Her sketchbook The Fates illustrates the processes through which the exhibition (The Fates, Secession, 2014) and its works have developed as well as the witty playfulness with which she employs traditional practices.
secession (ed.) |