Albareh Art Gallery to Host its First Exhibition in Dubai Showcasing Artworks by Contemporary Algerian Artist Hamza Bounoua

Bahrain, November 2011: Albareh Art Gallery arrives in Dubai with a solo exhibition of popular contemporary Algerian artist, Hamza Bounoua. The exhibition will take place at The Millennium Hotel in Dubai, from 21 November – 21 December 2011. Albareh Art Gallery’s first exhibition at The Millenium Hotel will be a prelude to the many upcoming shows the Gallery will hold at their gallery space, to be launched shortly.

The works of Hamza show close references to ethnicity and identity, colors and calligraphy signs interlaced giving birth to ancient shapes, primary forms and a new form of letters that is related to Hurufiya School of Art. This movement fuses the traditional and the contemporary, the letter and the sign, in a way that the letter is perceived as an artistic form and does not require to be read or decrypted.

Inspired by the works of the father of Algerian Modern Art, Mohammad Kadda and influenced by nature and its vivid colors while growing-up in the town of Bouira in Algeria, Hamza expresses his thoughts with shapes and Arabic letters in a meticulously stylized form. As the latter was created from very ancient languages and mathematical calculations, Hamza linked them within his own translation, only known to him, to tell us an entire different story. His present collection at the exhibition tells us a story that has been ploughed from his memory, visual pictures projecting them in his own way of seeing. African landscape shaped with gazelles, trees, valleys of lights and shadows in his artworks all express the source of his imagination.

Visitors to the exhibition can see that Hamza has been inspired by the art of calligraphy profusely used in the Middle East and has used the same technique into his latest work of art. Long narrow lines in black, filled with Arabic characters. Cursive or jagged styles where letters are treated like human: lying, asleep, kneeling or upright. In other works of art, his letters are spinning, always upwards, towards the sky. The artist’s extensive appreciation of life and people around him can be visualized in the way he showcases colors of the blue sky, a quiet sea and soft sand on a gentle land.

The Hamza Bounoua exhibition will run from 21 November until 21 December 2011 at The Millennium Hotel in Tecom, Dubai, Sundays through Thursdays, from 11.00 am – 6.00 pm. The exhibition will also open its doors on 21 November from 7.30– 9.30 pm.