By Nellie Lama

Special to the Jordan Times  

AMMAN – The present exhibition in the Alia Gallery is Mohammad Jalous’ sixth attempt to “find the potential energy that lies within the forms of nature that are within us and that are dispersed as details that create abstractions.” With these words Mohammad Jalous presents his tumultuous paintings that deal with a subject no less boisterous than war. They bear a predominance of the colour green, colour of optimism and vivacity with contrasting patches of red interspersed at different intervals, often as shocking forms crying out in disharmony because of the intensity of their hue, reiterating the courageous cry of the warrior that appears again and again in most of his figurative works.

The warring figures are almost always placed on the first plane while buildings tower above, in the upper part of the canvas, in a boisterous almost deaf cacophony of rhythms, with a predominance of curved windows and doors identifying the Arab Home.  

“My work represents the interaction of people with architecture. Architecture, of course, represents one’s homeland.” The artist explains: “The use of green is an extension of my past exhibition where the predominant colour was white.”

Two abstract paintings called “From Memory” are built on a basically cruciform construction, where thick white brushstrokes cover the red and green below leaving patches of those colours in the form of windows and doors.  

The overall tilting of the compositions to the left, he claims is meant and studied, if only to give movement and life to the paintings.

Mohammad often creates a frenzied texture with a mosaic of small brushstrokes; varied shades interpenetrate to form more dramatic rhythms.  

                                         Nation of lovers

“The weddings of the earth” is a work with an extensive format of 110 x 380 cm, painted on three simultaneous canvases. It portrays a roaring crowd ready to throw stones. Here again green dominates and is interrupted by sharp patches of black haphazardly placed in the composition. Red patches also flicker, at odd intervals, portraying all that is heroic from stone throwers, and the flag, to red hot flames from which tiny figures are fleeing. Above them, a couple of monumental hands carry a stone illustrating the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish “From a stone we shall build the nation of lovers”. Calligraphy found on the façade of the buildings calls onto the Koranic verses that deal with martyrdom as not death but eternal bliss.

On both sides of this vast work shapes open up and spaces are larger, smoother and more uniform. Even figures are enlarged and done with more realism, a woman raises both arms in a sign of victory.

There is a marked inconsistency in the work, be it in the size of objects and brushstrokes, or in the dispersion of colour and form. Its large scale requires that the artist distance himself from the canvas, recoils, enough to see it in its entirety and compose it as such. It is a very ambitious work that would normally require a great amount of preparation and sketching to arrive to a harmony that makes the work as solemn as it is meant to be.  

Mohammad paints a few canvases with a totally different style. Retaining his use of green interspersed with red he forms vertical undulating forms that fit within strict rectangular spaces filling a large horizontal portion of the canvas. Towering above that, in the centre, are impressions of houses.

“These are my latest works. They are very detailed. In the past, I felt details were irrelevant and I only worked with large spaces. Now I have more patience and care more for detail.”  

Truly enough, the part of the canvas that is filled with the undulating forms creates a rectangular area that could very well be called a compression, in the manner of some modern artists.

His best compositions are those that bear large independent figures, usually cloaked, coming forward towards the centre. Good perspective is created by their movement while the cloaks wrapped around their bodies give the artist a chance to create depths and volumes with the fold of the drapery.  

This exhibition will go on, at the Alia Gallery, until the end of March.

Jordan Times, March 25, 1989