Aref el Rayess

Aref el Rayess spent the best part of the 1980s in Saudi Arabia. Initially commissioned to create large-scale public sculptures in Jeddah, Tabuk and Riyadh, he was also an advisor to the Jeddah Open Air Museum. For several years, faced with the landscapes of Saudi, he painted deserts, repeatedly, compulsively, an almost mystical, meditative exercise that turned dry lands into abstract, sculptural, color fields. The works on view are key in the series, showing desert stones piled up into imaginary constructions.