Marwa Abdul-Rahman: The World
805 Traction Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90013
The Box is pleased to announce the opening of THE WORLD, our first exhibition works by Los Angeles-based artist Marwa Abdul-Rahman, opening December 10, 2022.
Conceived and composed in the aftermath of the global pandemic, the principal works in THE WORLD are five grouped, large-scale paintings that position an abstract, quasihuman form amidst the four elements. Earth, fire, water and air: each has a life of its own, but the elements are combined in the human form. Since 2019, Abdul-Rahman has studied spiritual techniques that enable a dialogue with phenomena that exist in between the invisible and physical worlds. A series of five mid-sized works and four small pieces function as snapshots into ordinary life surrounding these primal elements, and four collages call out to ancestors, known and unknown. In THE WORLD, Abdul-Rahman uses sculptural materials to create vessels for paintings that arrive as transmissions. Through these works, she is able to convey information that defies words.
Since receiving her MFA from ArtCenter College of Design in 2011, Marwa Abdul-Rahman has pursued a practice that straddles painting and sculpture, creating dense and complex three-dimensional forms that are at once frightening and seductive. Marrying paint with common materials like wire, epoxy and rags, Abdul-Rahman’s paintings seem to capture the essence of corporal, human experience as seen from somewhere beyond. They are charged with emotion. As she told Artforum in 2019, “Life depends on constraints. Wire and twine serve as a form of bondage and repression, as well as a form of containment, protection.”