The Dynamism of Iron Works by May Muzaffar

A few years ago Ahmed Al-Bahrani’s works began to attain a remarkable presence through his characteristic abstract sculptures to occupy a distinguished position among the works of Iraqi contemporary sculptures, inspiring a new spirit of artistic activity that has been recently marked with stagnation. These abstract works may add a new chapter to the history of modern sculpture in Iraq since they have been freed from the influence of the predecessors and departed from the scope of forms that are based on the various shapes of the living beings. Al-Bahrani has managed to create abstract compositions that seem to be mentally conceived and which are characterized by both clarity and simplicity. What is striking about Al-Bahrani's sculptures, whether round or relief, is that they challenge space as much as they challenge material, and that they penetrate the subconscious of the viewer with a halo of calm beauty that stems from their reduced forms.

His compositions look as if they do not belong to anything but their geometrical – or pseudo-geometrical shapes, yet they are empowered with hidden meanings that do not reveal themselves except to perceptive eyes and contemplative minds. Besides, these works, by no means, reveal the artist’s technical competence, high command and deep understanding of the basic principles of the art of sculpture which he originally obtained when he was an apprentice-student in the Fine Arts Institute in Baghdad.

Al-Bahrani depends on an imagination rich with scenes and events that have been accumulating from his early childhood in his hometown on the banks of the Euphrates. Being aware of the latest developments in international sculpture and its modern concepts and techniques, he tries to reach a compromise by subjecting the solid material to the flow of the ideas and images that haunt his mind. Therefore, iron, whether mass or plate, seem to respond to such ideas and images that have been engraved in his memory, and which he keeps recalling from places far away.

Although these works follow the techniques of modern Western sculpture and make use of Western theories, they essentially derive their characteristics from the artist’s personal experience. His forms are not divorced from their strict geometrical molds, nor do they abolish their origins which are derived from flexible natural elements. While his sculptures are based on the circle, the square and the rectangle, his contents derive their images from earth, space and sea; they are essential sources for the implications found in these forms. Among his compositions, there are waving metal ribbons forming bands that seem to embrace the ground while extending in different directions to penetrate the space as if they were rays of flowing light or water waves vibrating in an imagined sea. That what makes these sculptures capable of becoming harmonized with the place, and capable of being part of nature or even a complementing element to that nature. Besides, Bahrani's cubic, circled or other forms maintain some sort of movement and flexibility. This dynamism is capable of making his colorless abstract solid forms enriched with an aesthetic power.

The relief works, hanged on the walls, are used as surfaces on which the artist engraves different shapes and symbols, of inherited folkloric or religious origins, arranged in systematic units depending on repetition and analogy. According to Al Bahrani, these signs are relevant to man’s hand marks. Shadow and light seem to interact in those surfaces to create a highly expressive sense of beauty. Perhaps, Al-Bahrani wanted to paint, sculpt and write at the same time borrowing his symbols from the environment he grew up in, where he first practiced his artistic vocabulary on the mud of the Euphrates banks, shaping his forms and giving them names when he was a child with nothing to play with except the riverside that responded to his imagination.

From playing with mud to playing with iron Al-Bahrani’s artistic journey moves towards a further promising wealth of production. This balance between the utilization of international techniques and expressing images of deeply rooted implications, has enabled the artist, through hard work and complete dedication, to make a breakthrough in modern art history in Iraq and to achieve his own characteristics which, though in its early stages, may constitute an immense and self-imposing achievement in contemporary sculpture among Arab artists.