Vernissage Solo Exhibition '' What lies beneath colour''

What Lies Beneath Colour What lies beneath colour is the first large-scale retrospective of the work by Saudi Arabian artist Dr. Sami Al Marzoogi (b.1945). The solo exhibition will be held at Hafez Gallery from the 24th of January - 3rd of March 2023. Curated by Basma Harasani. The exhibition brings together more than 150 drawings and paintings of the self-taught artist, who has a background in Radiology, produced between 1986 and 2022. While formally diverse, Al Marzoogi’s prolific oeuvre reveals the artist’s decades-long quest for uncovering the transformational potential of colour and the line through an expressive visual language that resides at the borderline between figuration and abstraction. Throughout the exhibition, realistic and abstract-looking landscape views, deconstructed human figures, patterns, organic motifs, and fluid colour explorations rendered in ink, watercolours, acrylics, pastels, and polychromes bring forth the artist’s keen sensibility, drawing skills, and ability to create abstractions of what surrounds him. “It’s the contrast of shapes, colours and light that had me intrigued. When it comes to my work, I don't like to think in terms of categories or definitions. My work stems from emotions. At the end of the day, you could argue that it has a deeper meaning or that it does not, that is up to the viewer”. - Dr. Sami Al Marzoogi While escaping all labels and remaining true to his own creative path that started later on in his life, Al Marzoogi’s works take the viewer through the artist’s multidirectional introspective life journey, one in which he has unearthed the many emotions of colour. Dr. Sami Marzoogi has always been inspired by art. However, the self-taught artist first pursued a career in Radiology and incorporated art into his daily routine in the mid-1980s, when he returned to Saudi following more than a decade-long stay in Germany. Nowadays in his seventies, the accomplished and elusive artist continues reinventing his art and for the first time shares his entire life’s work with the public.