By Mark Jenkins (see original)
To convey the quality of something that’s missing is a formidable technical challenge for a visual artist. Doing so can also function as a metaphor, as Sam Husseini demonstrates in “Invisibly Present/Visibly Absent,” his Gallery Al Quds show. A Jordan-born Marylander of Palestinian heritage, the artist applies paint to natural materials that disappear, whether largely or entirely, in the finished work.
The most imperceptible of Husseini’s ingredients is snow. He sticks it to a canvas and then covers it with layers of sprayed paint. When the snow melts, it leaves dried ponds and rivulets amid the textured, multihued pigment. Since Husseini often employs earthy and metallic shades, the craggy finished paintings sometimes suggest topographical renderings of the artist’s sandy ancestral region. He titled one “Cradle” after noticing that two prominent fissures resembled the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
Traces of other natural elements, among them flowers and even remains of dead birds, persist in some of the paintings, although not always identifiably. One picture is made entirely of the natural tints left behind by decayed leaves; others incorporate grass or spider webs. Husseini also paints on found objects, including a car radiator and window screens. The latter were partly inspired by the much more conventional pictures found on old Baltimore rowhouses.
Husseini, who also works in journalism, is not the sort of artist who stays mum about his interests and references. Each of his works comes with an explanation, which can be quite involved. In addition to musing on dispossessed Palestinians and the relationship between the United States and the Arab world, the painter invokes the Tao Te Ching’s teachings about the universe’s natural order. He has named one canvas “Accelerate,” for an R.E.M. song, and another, the uncharacteristically pretty “Gain-of-Function,” for the term used by biological research labs for making a pathogen more lethal. Husseini “sought to co-mission Nature as a collaborator,” explains his statement, but his paintings depict a world where humanity and the world are profoundly out of balance.
Sam Husseini: Invisibly Present/Visibly Absent Through Oct. 31 at the Jerusalem Fund Gallery Al Quds, 2425 Virginia Ave. NW. Open by appointment.