Untitled Page

Hakim Alakel’s Seeing things from above is devoted to works which spotlights

on human behavior in domestic settings and doing everyday tasks or enjoying

themselves in ordinary ways - scenes which are an imaginative take on popular

Yemeni culture and modern life.

VISUAL VIBRATION

From the bird's eye view, Hakim’s works offers us the chance to witness human activity in a different

way. Dramatic representations are distinguished by forms in angles rendered in bold patterns of color

that accentuate the abstractness of the pieces. The paintings are carefully composed with constructed

geometries and high-keyed palette juxtaposing warm tones with cool and bits of other colors that

produce visual vibration - a fascinating combination of jarring modernity with wonderful traditional

design motifs.

The color that illustrates these works is vivid, contrasting, and lush. These three aspects combine to

demonstrate equally bright tales in these simplistic settings - full, loaded, directed at the viewer; the

emotional impact is fascinating. Cerulean blues made brighter alongside flaming orange bring to the

table a sense of excitement. Radiant reds and lemony yellows, flesh tones and spring greens bring

out the extraordinary in the ordinary.

His brushworks are fluid, predetermined, and linear, but somehow he manages to combine them

with random and spontaneous movements. The combination of the long and short, and thick and thin

brushstrokes add to the tension inherent in his unusual depictions, making his works both

compelling and highly appealing.

DESIRES AND ANXIETIES

Educated in Moscow, Hakim’s work also shows influence of the art nouveau. The ornate surface

patterning in some of his paintings, can never determine whether these paintings are focused in its

pattern-making, or in its subject-matter, or its emotional charge. It doesn't have a central schema. All

the various levels work strongly and work together, interacting and compounding but not necessarily

agreeing into a determinate sense, the subject. Yet the body of his work is easy-to-read: every part is

visible and plays its appointed role. And the contrast in the surface of his work is highly visible; the

figures while in acts of play or relaxation expresses tension - the artist’s constant expression of

desires and anxieties - a glimpse at reality that cannot be verbalized but instead it has to be

visualized.

CONTINUING THEME

As the key to the power of representational work is the draftsmanship, Hakim is a skilled draftsman

who has the ability to say and express it in something unique and each flight into his works is a visual

experience that transforms the viewer from the realm of representational realism into an abstract

stage and leaves his viewer ample space for eye and mind to wander.

Hakin Alakel is from a generation of Middle Eastern painters who are very serious about what they do,

and he has always been aware of his place in Yemeni history. On view in this exhibition are paintings

of high quality, a continuing theme in his work and as the world keeps on changing, the richness of

his new art will remain to compel anyone who loves the art of painting.