O-1 Visas
Abdulrahman Hamdi’s paintings appear to be full of text, but their communicative ability is strictly wordless. It is an irony, richly articulated by the Saudi artist in thick oils, pulsing colors, and illegible scrawls, that bespeaks the vast amount of human experience which, for reasons of tradition, politics or habit, go unspoken. Fortunately for Hamdi, he can say more on canvas than most of us can in hours of intimate revelation. Untold Stories, his recent exhibition at the SAIC Galleries, includes three types of pictures: a series of tiny haunting panels that record sleep paralysis visions; a joyful purple assemblage of disarmingly naïve dog, tree, snake and sun sketches; and his forte, palimpsestic, calligraphic compositions rendered in the most vivid hues, sometimes midsize but mostly monumental. Many have phrasal titles that can be arranged and re-arranged, like lines in an infinitely flexible and expandable prose poem. The fifteen-foot-long “Nothing Here Knows How to End, I Stayed Longer Than I Should Have” could be a blackboard, an urban panorama, a diagram of brain activity, but foremost it is an astonishing work of art.
—Lori Waxman 3/20/26 10:53 AM