Nabad Art Gallery opens a solo exhibition by Jordanian artist, curator and Director General of the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, Khalid Khreis, his third solo at Nabad. According to the artist, his work continues to portray one of the main elements of his artistic preoccupations, people, whom he depicts as concentrated, interconnected crowds, represented by dots; hence the title of the exhibition. The rhythm created by the repetition of the dot reflects the artist’s Sufi-inspired meditations on the fragility of the human spirit and the mysteries of the universe. Khreis studied art in Egypt, Spain, Italy and Mexico and holds a Ph.D., cum laude, in the History of Art from Barcelona University. This is his sixteenth solo exhibition.

In my last solo exhibition “People, Places and Traces” at Nabad Gallery—a space where I love to exhibit—I portrayed these three subjects, and here I return to focus on one of them—people. At the beginning, there were teaming multitudes, packed together; this took me to the dot, in different sizes, directions, colours and textures. Every time, the dot carries me to a dialogue with itself, within a specific space in which it is the fundamental element, in all its various states that I mentioned. The dot continues to remind me of crowds sometimes, or of stars and planets, and of everything that moves in this universe. Occasionally, the dot transports me to either natural or man-made visual scenes around us, to excessively simple objects sometimes, or to interconnected and accumulated objects at other times. Colour, in its different shades, harmonies and contrasts, is an important element in the dot’s prominence. Thus, I feel that I have not yet exhausted the persistent need to continue my journey with the dialogue of the dot.

Khalid Khreis