Mohammed Sami: The Point 0

Mohammed Sami's first institutional solo exhibition in the UK, “The Point 0”, is now on view at De La Warr Pavilion in East Sussex through August 28, 2023. The exhibition was previously on view at Camden Art Centre in London, and its current iteration on view at De La Warr Pavilion features four new large-scale paintings unveiled for the first time.

Sami draws our attention to certain textures, colours, and forms in each of his compositions: an ominous shadow cast over the crumbling façade of a building; the clustered shadows of trees covering a glowing edifice in the background, or an impenetrable wall pushing up against the painting’s foreground. It is within such evocative details that belated memories are triggered and simmer below the surface of the painting. In Sami’s work, time, like memory, is treated and experienced as a flexible material. Working directly onto the canvas using a brush, pallet knife, acrylic and spray paint, Sami never takes photographs or makes sketches, instead mining his own experiences from his formative years in Iraq. Yet while his works are freighted with personal memories, they are ambiguous enough to invite multiple associations and readings within each enigmatic composition. The exhibition is accompanied by the first dedicated monograph on Sami’s paintings, designed by Fraser Muggeridge with essays by Darian Leader and Amy Sherlock

For more information, please visit the De La Warr Pavilion website.