Ahmad Canaan  

     written  by     Nava Shoshani

 In the work of Ahmad Canaan, the Arabesque and geometrical shapes have turned into an inseparable and distinctive mark of his artwork.

    A different style yet still influenced by the decorative art, which was developed by Ahmad is the use of the “Mushrabiya”, And indeed this divider reminds a net in its design, being a platform, from which geometrical shapes were removed. Ahmad draws the sight of the street and sights from within his mind from behind the Mushrabiya. It is possible to see how his creation leads to a place where the artist feels trapped, and outsider, representing a sort of curfew, whether by choice or not.

    Another of Ahmad’s unique techniques is the assembly and disassembly and using Synergy. Meaning, taking the whole and making it more than the sum of all its parts. Like a big group of small fish, swimming together and by doing that appearing like a big threatening animal, preventing the bigger fish from hunting them. Ahmad’s process includes a platform, out of which smaller parts were removed and fused into a new art piece. This kind of art makes the Ornamentation an actual thesis. The technical principle of the design expresses the conceptual ideas and substance of the piece. Taking out of the platform some shapes, just like melting them into a new mass, is the artist declaration.

    Generally it can be said that the Ornamentics in Ahmad Canaan’s work sometime appears as a visual background or a formative layer, but in most cases it’s a screen, softening or deceiving, through which the artist’s ideas and insights are shown. The viewer is exposed to the heavy content and pain through out a decorative front.

Most of Ahmad’s pieces in this exhibition belong to a new series called “The Leader”. This series shows the horse as a representative image for the leader, the warrior, the soldier, the people. Sometimes upright and a winner and sometimes defeated or a victim. This selected image is derived from the longing of the artist to the days when the Arab people were “On the horse”. And so an allegedly naive weave of layers and shapes become a wider and stronger, sometimes even blunt statement. A structure of which its texture is made of and/or emptied of many horses, becomes a statement about a people without an army and without a leader compared to the potential that lays in the changing of this situation.