Ibrahim Nubani | Men in the Sun
Paintings
In his works, Ibrahim Nubani creates a painterly frame which circumscribes the tension between economically painted colorful geometrical shapes and the more expressively painted monochromatic pictorial space. This tension juxtaposes two different painterly languages, reinforcing the sense of structural transience arising from the works. This is exemplified in Cemetery, painted in 1988, approximately one year after the outbreak of the first Intifada. With its brown frame, this painting appears like a gaping hole when observed from above. The painterly surface eliminates the skyline, whereas sky-blue and soil-brown are inverted. A cypress tree of sorts hovers at the center of the painting, ostensibly demarcating the boundaries of the cemetery, its branches signifying eternal life, mourning, and lamentation. Painted next to the cypress is an entrance door which does not lead to another possible space, but rather sinks in the mud. Three geometrical elements, akin to gravestones, are marked in bright oil paints on the muddy surface-an orange square demarcated by a black contour, a yellow square, and a red circle-signifiers which likewise float in a deadlocked and muddy, expressive painterly sphere.