Driss Ouadahi’s latest show addresses urban alienation through real and imagined cityscapes

Driss Ouadahi, an Algerian painter, is showing his second solo show, titled Inside Zenith, at Dubai's Lawrie Shabibi gallery.

Driss Oudahi’s works for the exhibition Inside Zenith are of urban landscapes that are based on memories of real places. Courtesy Lawrie Shabibi

They look startlingly real, but the urban landscapes in Driss Ouadahi’s paintings are mostly imaginary. The artist’s practice involves immersing himself in a landscape, taking photographs and spending a long time acquainting himself with them before putting away all visual references and painting from memory.

The results therefore are “real”, but also question the shifting nature of perception.

“When I look at an urban landscape I always ask myself what I am actually seeing, where is the beginning, where is the end, where is up, where is down and, finally, will everything I see remain in my head as I see it or will it change?”

Ouadahi's new solo show, Inside Zenith, is at Dubai's Lawrie Shabibi gallery until the end of the month.

In his works, Ouadahi has used oil paint to mark out the lines of the architectural shapes, then scraped most of it away for a washed-out look – an emphasis on the fact that they were created from memory. He then painted much more definite lines in a grid-like pattern, on top of the landscapes, to give them a multidimensional effect.

They are strongly reminiscent of window blinds and it feels as if the viewer is supposed to be looking out of a building onto these surreal cities.

“That is one way to see it,” says Ouadahi. “But for me it is actually the raw structure of the building somehow emerging to the front of the canvas, like an X-ray of the building that I am giving prominence to.”

When seen in this context, the paintings become much more bleak and empty and we enter the realm of urban alienation, when inhabitants of some of the most populous places can be lonely.

Born in Casablanca to Algerian parents in 1959, Ouadahi spent the first few years of his life in Morocco before relocating to Algeria, where he trained as an architect. He then enrolled in an arts degree at the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts d’Alger, which he completed at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Ouadahi continues to live and work in Düsseldorf.

His has been a life of relocation and, at times, alienation – and this certainly comes through in the work.

One piece in particular is a nod to his childhood. Circus Night was created when Ouadahi revisited Casablanca after 50 years. Along with his older brother, he went to his first home in one of the first social-housing projects (Cité Riviera) in Casablanca.

Although he has no recollection of the place – he left when he was 3 – he had a fleeting vision of a circus. He called his mother to ask if it was a real or imagined detail and she confirmed that there had never been a circus.

Nevertheless, Ouadahi created one, giving it prominence in this painting – one of the most colourful among the otherwise muted tones of the show.

The final touches to the paintings are completely at odds with the geometric lines. Towards the base of the large canvases, Ouadahi has created large, spontaneous strokes to resemble nature’s organic forms.

“I am interested in the relationship between these natural shapes and the geometric forms,” he says. “It reminds me and the viewer that the paintings are not true representations, just attempts at capturing the poetry of the place.”

Alongside the paintings are two works on paper that are rendered in a different style – they are made up of geometric segments of colour, showing fragments of buildings.

“These are photographic images from different angles,” he explains, “inspired by the fact that sometimes, when I was taking photos in the social housing, I had to hold the camera down at my waist as people wouldn’t like me taking their picture.”

• Inside Zenith runs until November 27 at Lawrie Shabibi gallery, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, www.lawrieshabibi.com