A solo exhibition of artist Badr Ali (b. 1992, San Francisco, lives and works in Jeddah and Berlin), Tired Lion presents a new body of work consisting of paintings and works on paper stemming from lion statues seen in public spaces.
Swift sketches of movements, landscapes, and gestures make up the building blocks of Badr Ali's works and compositions, which integrate drawing, screen-printing, and painting. Taking small-scale and shaky hand-drawn figures as a starting point, he extracts lines and motifs that are enlarged, screen-printed, and re-drawn on paper, canvas, and untreated tarp. In so doing, the artist combines the spontaneity of rapid sketching with a meticulous process of composition, layering, and repetition.
These works are grounded in a long history of representation and appropriation of lions – how they are portrayed, commissioned, imagined, and used, for a wide range of artistic, spiritual, and political means. A typical expression of might and power, yet at times surprisingly melancholic, these statues are marked by the passage of time and exposure to the elements for decades or centuries.
Badr Ali’s lines bring movement back to their stillness. Here, he repeats and layers these lines and motifs – which have a different composition in each image – using ink on a large canvas surface, in the same way that he would sketch on a notebook. The exhibition also presents a new series of works employing white ink, giving the lines on canvas a ghostly touch, almost like a negative of the initial outlines traced on paper.
Swift sketches of movements, landscapes, and gestures make up the building blocks of Badr Ali's works and compositions, which integrate drawing, screen-printing, and painting. Taking small-scale and shaky hand-drawn figures as a starting point, he extracts lines and motifs that are enlarged, screen-printed, and re-drawn on paper, canvas, and untreated tarp. In so doing, the artist combines the spontaneity of rapid sketching with a meticulous process of composition, layering, and repetition.
These works are grounded in a long history of representation and appropriation of lions – how they are portrayed, commissioned, imagined, and used, for a wide range of artistic, spiritual, and political means. A typical expression of might and power, yet at times surprisingly melancholic, these statues are marked by the passage of time and exposure to the elements for decades or centuries.
Badr Ali’s lines bring movement back to their stillness. Here, he repeats and layers these lines and motifs – which have a different composition in each image – using ink on a large canvas surface, in the same way that he would sketch on a notebook. The exhibition also presents a new series of works employing white ink, giving the lines on canvas a ghostly touch, almost like a negative of the initial outlines traced on paper.