Ahmad Siyar Qasimi's paintings and drawings quiver in their simultaneously recognizable and estranged motifs. With a meticulous and precise technique, Ahmad Siyar Qasimi places brushstrokes of oil paint on the canvas. By painting with one color at a time and often layering complementary colors on each other, the artist creates a vibrating and physical texture in the picture surface. He achieves the same effect in his drawings, where the black oil stick creates painterly qualities on the white paper.
With a clear foundation in the motifs and allegories of art history, Ahmad Siyar Qasimi paints in the interaction between the undeniably beautiful and the indefinably uncomfortable. Often, the motivic starting points are found photographs from the mass media news streams. Magnificent nature motifs are occupied by people wandering through the landscape, and flashlights illuminate dark forests. With Ahmad Siyar Qasimi, the hidden drama runs as if in an undercurrent, and the motifs never reveal their actual narratives. Instead, they are nourished by their ambiguous expression, allowing the indeterminate images to live in the here and now, removed from their original contexts and transformed into the sensuous and present painting.
Ahmad Siyar Qasimi (1986, DK) graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2014. Ahmad Siyar Qasimi has exhibited at institutions such as the Arken Museum for Contemporary Art, Trapholt Museum of Art and Design, Willumsen’s Museum, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, and Kunstbygningen Filosoffen. He is represented in the collections of the Trapholt Museum of Art and Design and the National Arts Foundation. From 2017-2019, he represented Denmark at the JCE Biennale, in 2021, he received the Remmen Foundation Art Award, and in 2024 he was assigned The New Carlsberg Foundation’s Artist Grant.
Grønne Drømme, 2023, oil on canvas, 200 x 254 cm
Lygtefører, 2022, oil on canvas, 200 x 280 cm.
Allegro, 2021, oil on canvas, 190 x 180 cm.
En strøm af skridt, 2023, oil on paper, 140 x 210 cm.
Nyudsprungen bøgeskov, 2022, pastel on paper, 25 x 39 cm.
The Boys love to sing, 2017, Oil on canvas, 148 x 210 cm
Three Sisters, 2015, Oil on canvas, 56 x 79 cm
Ophold, 2019, Oil on canvas, 140 x 210 cm
Med ryggen mod Sydsol, 2018, Oil on canvas, 190 x 250 cm
Vandretur gennem tåge, 2015, Oil on canvas, 120 x 130 cm
Untitled, 2016, Oil on canvas, 120 x 105 cm., 2016, Oil on canvas, 120 x 105 cm approx.
Untitled (2), 2016, Oil on canvas, 105 x 85 cm