Galerie | Mohammed Alani

It’s been almost 5 years since we first met. At that time, for the Venice Biennale, I was preparing the Pavilion of Iraq, the country where you were born. The meeting was much more than a simple workshop visit. In a space somewhere in Forêt, a sort of empty garage, you had prepared a small exhibition. You thought it was important that I could physically experience your works, instead of showing me a series of photos on your computer screen. The meeting was a real invitation to look, to feel a transformation, to play a game. And we call this game art. It is essential to look at the ability to give, through the imagination, another meaning to things. The cap of a water bottle can easily become a city for a child. A stick from a tree can even transform into a coach. As an artist, you certainly play, but seriously, after careful thought and weighing. What most of us throw away becomes raw material for your artistic work. And just like Picasso who brought together a saddle and a handlebar of a bicycle to make an assemblage, you bring objects together by linking them to each other, by juxtaposing them, by temporarily attaching them. Each work is like an idea, a photo that has not yet been taken, an impulse or a thought. It tells us where to look, invites us to connect form and space. Furthermore, the spectator often becomes part, protagonist, accomplice, especially in performances. The spectator becomes a carrier, a base, and therefore sees himself reduced to an object. The moments are modeled in the image of a sculptor who shapes a face in clay. Mohammed Alani not only borrows or cites visible elements from recent art history, but also principles that he turns upside down. Nevertheless, Mohammed Alani is above all an artist who, intuitively, constructs images that enhance the banality of everyday life with playful simplicity. Philippe Van Cauteren Director of S.M.A.K. Ghent museum Ghent, February 23, 2018

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2017 .. “Al Hadba Al-Hadba Since ancient times, man has admired the sky. It was an ideal, flawless world in which true and permanent beauty was the home of truth. He tried to discover it, but it was considered impossible at the time, so he turned to the imagination. The myths and epics placed heroes and gods in the sky, and the reason for this was his inability to understand a phenomenon, so he explained it with imagination, a fertile mixture of myth, poetry and exaggeration. He left us traces upwards, and this tradition has continued to the present day. We are fascinated by this great building that combines uniqueness, modernity and a little strangeness that mimics the times, as many countries aspire to create the world’s tallest building. world. What’s the secret behind this? Is it an ancient desire to reach the sky by traditional means? It has been inhabited by humans since ancient times. Contemporary humans have been creative in their construction in terms of the shape, materials and technology used. Because they are subject to the laws of fashion, they imitate a specific era or period, unlike ancient buildings that adapt to all eras, as if they were an eternal fashion. They are admired and have become icons that are harder to erase from the human memory. Even if it is removed, it remains dominant in the collective memory of humanity. Why is the palm tree beautiful because it has a simple shape and faces upwards, in harmony with its environment? It lives a long time and tells silent stories about what happened to the people who lived near it or passed by it, and how this drove them to climb upwards, even though it is often exposed to difficult circumstances. We tilt it slightly, but it doesn’t bend. If it bends, it collapses, and the palm tree doesn’t collapse, it dies standing up, and that’s that. Al-Hadba text by: Dr Ahmed Khlaif Mankhia a” at MErode Ronse Patric Tuytens collection

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DISPLAY Mohammed Alani Map of the Space curated by Ilaria Monti 2023 Parma – Italy

at Black Swan Gallery collection 2021

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“passenger” 2019

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Marion Sehier Artist 2021

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Visible memories Mohammed Alani is using his memory of his cultural heritage and everything he has learned and seen to shape a simple piece of art composed of a brownish-red clay tablet on which something has been written in braille. What has been written, is like a code or a talisman to lock something as we can find in ancient Iraqi and Pharaonic civilizations: to close a burial place, on a royal seal, symbols and incantations to warn and scare intruders or the Sumerian tablets with cuneiform writings. It reminds us of amulets hung on the facades of houses to ward off evil spirits that were prevalent in Iraq and have their roots in the ancient Sumeria and Babylon: a turquoise circle with 7 holes in it. But it also reminds us of the holes in a horseshoe that is used in Europe against those evil spirits and was also hung on the facades of houses. Mohammed Alani was looking for the collective awareness of different societies and found what unites them, despite their differences in language and geographic location. There have to exist common elements that bring people together and this is what pushed Alani to create a piece of art that everyone understands in order to create an artistic awareness. There is no better script than Braille because this is the only script people all over the world understand independent of their culture, language or color. The letters don’t differ from country to country like the letters of all other languages on earth, which do differ in form and pronunciation. This is the message of art: the creation of joy, fun, beauty, understanding and harmony. Mohammed Alani is putting the cohesion between people in the spotlight. The form of the piece suggests that it is an sos message that was left behind alongside the road. Maybe someone that passes will offer help. This represents the catastrophic events in the Middle East that forced people to run like crazy, away from their devastated region and how they were received in Europe. Mohammed Alani has the intention to turn this into a memorial for human cohesion that becomes part of the collective memory. As audience, we notice some sort of convergence and dialogue between what is written on the plastic tube and what is on the clay tablet. One can state that it is a dialogue between the past and the present. The plastic refers to the industry, the Industrial Revolution and the consumer markets while clay is as old as the earth itself and refers to the first humans and the ancient civilizations that were using clay instead of paper to write and as a base to make many things. The text on the plastic tube is also a digital print while what has been written on the clay tablet was done by hand. Nevertheless there is a connection and communication between the two, between the ancient and the modern world, because both are the heritage or mankind. There is no present without roots in the past and there is no future without the present. Mohammed Alani means that whatever kind of development or progress, people are still dependent on each other, especially in times of a crisis that unites them. So we come to the conclusion that this piece of art is a concept on human symbols that are traces that testify to their role in realizing human awareness. It gives us an exciting aesthetic form rather than its exaggerated interpretations. Dr. Ahmed Khlaif Mankhi translation: Sofie Van Den Abbeele http://www.mohammedalani.be/ See less — with Ahmed Almankhi and Sofie Van Den Abbeele.

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Mohammed Alani

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collection at CAS : Contemporary Art Space 2021

PHILIPPE BRAEM [by’ro]. [by’ro] desk for contemporary art curator 2018

Pol Pauwels 2018

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Daniel Dutrieux visual artist, sculptor and painter 2018

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“Displacement in Contemporary Sculptural Formation” “Sample analysis” Model .1 Country: Belgium. Artist: Mohamed ANI. Business name: Untitled. Year of production.2020: Material: a matchbox of paper and two dice. The work is embodied from a matchbox with two dice inside, and the matchbox has opened a hole the size or length of the two dice, and the dice have taken up space or the upper part of the matchbox is complete Which gave the feeling that the box is filled with dice stones and the Matchbox was placed directly on the floor, the simplicity is represented in the presentation by the artist Mohammed ANI, he did not use complexity In putting forward his idea through the artwork, he has carefully selected things with thoughtful planning and brought them out in this way, he certainly conducted a lot of experiments until he settles on this formation The final. The artist has drawn attention to the importance of the small thing, and we care about small things, despite our frequent use of them, but we look at them despite the accuracy of their manufacture. The way of presentation alerts us that the objects that we throw or are on the ground that arouse any interest to passers-by when they see them, despite their kind of special aesthetic, offers us The artist is a work of art based on conceptual values, visual fascination and expectation, so that the recipient expected that the work of art of this size was displayed on the ground, he expected that It is shown in a special special place, elegant, and maybe because of its size, there may be a lot of viewers who notice it, and they may accidentally crush it with their feet, or some think it’s just garbage And maybe he wanted the viewers to see their reaction to this work and what they comment on, and it can be counted as a kind of alert to everything we see in privacy, thought and beauty if they can To see differently or change our vision of our surroundings . The work achieves an intellectual dialogue between the recipient and himself, and this dialogue continues for a long time with the recipient trying to put answers to each The questions that passed through his mind . The use of ready – made objects in circulation in society as works of art reminds us of the works of Marcel Duchamp as a bottle holder and a snow shovel, as well as the works of pop artists, as Andy did Warhol used Coca-Cola cans, briello cans and Campbell’s soup, as well as rochemberk used ready-made objects as part of his artwork, but the artist Mohammed ANI What distinguishes the artist Mohamed Ani is that he did not adopt an artistic direction or a certain ideology, but is interested in aesthetic artistic theses with aesthetic values And with a smart monetary vision, the dice suggest to us what we are doing is like a gamble based on luck in this world, and this is what the matchbox hole suggests, as if it reminds us of an experiment or work that we are doing, and The results depend on what we do, it’s like a dice roll that needs luck, despite our great abilities, and this is what we saw with what happened to the world in 2008, when the crisis happened Global finance, which overthrew sober Giants companies that declared bankruptcy, and this process was repeated by the corona delinquency sweeping the world.The artist has made breakthroughs both at the level of The style, directing, showing and recruitment, which made the recipient move to unlimited multiple shifts for what she received from unconventional proposals, so they called for actions, thoughts and feelings Full of poetry and emotion, she tries to search in various directions and arts through memory, and the artist Mohamed ANI succeeded in controlling and pulling the recipient into a circle and influencing him Intellectually, artistically and aesthetically . Dr. Ahmed Khlaif Mankhi See less — with Ahmed Almankhi.

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Mohammed Alani

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The Beginning Mohammed Alani is presenting us with stories about history from a beautiful and interesting cultural perspective. He does this with a piece of art showing an ochre tin can that got hit in the center, creating a deep dent and in the middle of that dent is a tennis ball. Despite the violent act causing the dent, it is a beautiful piece of art that has nothing to do with chaos and destruction. It reminds us of the Big Bang, the creation of the universe and the beautiful world we live in that all came into being through a chaotic event. No one can imagine this huge destructive force that we are the result of. It’s not an explosion as we know, but rather a chemical process mixing multiple materials in order to produce a new one. Mohammed Alani created an aesthetic process by merging industrial materials, resulting in a wonderful piece of art. The aesthetic process of this experiment continues in the interaction between de audience and the artwork. As there is a biological process happening among mankind represented by the formation of an embryo, The shape of the ball with the groove sitting in the tin can resembles a human fetus in its mother’s womb, referring to the beginning. Starting from one specific action and leading to many expected and unexpected results. This is the history of mankind from its dawn until today. The round shape of the ball, the size of an apple, also has more than one symbolic meaning referring to our daily life. The apple has had a huge impact on mankind. It is the reason man was sent down to earth from heaven according to several religious traditions. The apple also reminds us of Newton and how the apple falling down in front of him was the basis for discovering the law of gravity which was a huge scientific progress. And then there is Steve Jobs’ apple, that changed the world with its concept and new technology. The collision between the piece of art itself and location it has been placed in, evokes ideas of the absurd, the contradictory and the imaginary in this world. Planting this work of art in this environment is intended to break expectations, surprising the audience by using a location like the wing of a Classic Art Museum as a backdrop. This is our first impression of the piece, however the artist also wanted to declare that every beginning is different and with time will develop and grow to become something else. The Classic Arts didn’t come into being in the form we know now. It originates from the dawn of mankind on the face of this earth, starting with lines and vague symbols on rocks. Later these evolved into the shape of a mother goddess and continuing to evolve until it reached its peak during the Renaissance. This shows us that something incompatible can result in a new beginning. An idea starts with a small spark that develops into a creative achievement, whether the idea is artistic or scientific, it is like the embryo. The small piece of art contrasting with the location it is placed in proves that things shouldn’t be measured by size, but rather by their impact. Like the tiny screw that holds together the engine of the car. Like meteorites, some of them seem barely the size of a grape, yet they can light up the sky at night. Like a small bullet that can kill. And so simple ideas are more effective and influential than complex, exaggerated and colossal ones. We can see abstract art that is based on reduction and simplification, such as the work of Piet Mondrian and Joseph Boyes, who use small and simple proportions to convey a large meaning. Like the huge and gorgeous Pyramids in Egypt and the Iraqi cylinder seal which is no more than 3 cm, yet its splendor rivals that of the pyramids. And so artists, especially those belonging to the postmodernist era, illustrate the increasingly consumerist reality by using waste and especially metals. They have changed the materials used in art from alabaster and bronze to everyday, banal things that no one cares about, turning them into creative art that parallels the grandeur of Classical Art. For example the French artist César Baldaccini using metal plates and turning them into cubes using huge metal presses and John Chamberlain who also uses metal, especially from cars. Mohammed Alani merges two materials in order to produce a work of art. He didn’t opt for a lot of different materials like Rauschenberg did, nor did he use similar materials like Arman. It is a kind of controversy to say everything is measured by human standards because mankind is dominant in this world. Beauty is something that mankind perceives and enjoys differently in different periods of time. Every era has its own beauty standards. And so the artist is presenting beautiful material that tells the history of beauty through a contemporary piece of art, carrying us through different stages of human life. Dr. Ahmed Khlaif Mankhi translation: Sofie Van Den Abbeele See less — with Ahmed Almankhi and Sofie Van Den Abbeele in Saint-Gilles.

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Denyse Neuenschwander Champion Artist 2019

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Sabrina Montiel-Soto Artist 2019

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Denyse Neuenschwander Champion Artist 2018

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In this life there are different and varied traces, each trace has a feature that distinguishes it from others, and how many traces left on earth belong to people who thought and walked in different times, and the most famous of these traces that were left on the soil of the moon being the first human trace outside our closed world ..The credit for this trace goes back to the traces that were left on the earth, and by the way of continuous traces, new paths are opened. This is the advantage of man being a thinker and with an idea he leaves a trace. The trace may be small over time, it becomes gigantic, or it may be large in its time, then it turns into something ordinary, except for the fact that the trace is a memory. Some of them have passed here, and some of them are fixed, and some of them are forgotten and erased from this existence. Dr. Ahmed Khlaif Mankhi