PUNCTUM – Omar Hassan
Text taken from the website https://www.punctumomarhassan.it/
From Miami to New York, via London, Berlin and Milan. The Italian-Egyptian artist exhibits his artwork for the first time in Palermo in collaboration with the Fondazione Federico II.
OMAR HASSAN was raised, by his Italian Christian-Catholic mother and Egyptian Muslim father, in a family used to cultural differences, tolerance and the new. Thus, there is no better venue than the Royal Palace, a laboratory of ideas dating back to Frederick II’s reign, which encloses the marvellous Palatine Chapel, symbol par excellence of integration between cultures.
Concept and action underpin everything he does as an artist. Obsessed by time, Omar Hassan bases his research on synthesising it in his art, fascinated by the great masters such as Fontana, Pollock and Manzoni, who in the very energy of their strokes have embedded a new philosophy or concept.
Omar Hassan’s areas of expression become true ‘themes’ marked by his experimentalism on colour and action: the fist in the Breaking Through series, which made him world-famous as an artist-boxer, the use of spray paint in the series Injections and Lights.
Omar Hassan’s 36 years old artistic journey is constantly evolving: after exhibiting in Miami and New York, passing through London, Berlin and Milan, he lands in Palermo with PUNCTUM, an exhibition created and designed in collaboration with the Fondazione Federico II, to be held from the 24th of March to the 1st of October at the Royal Palace.
PUNCTUM represents the artist’s vital energy making each work of art unique. An exhibition exploring the interstitial space between classicism and contemporaneity, connecting past and future. A tribute to the “value of the individual as part of a serene and harmonious whole”. The ‘Map of Palermo’, a work created ad hoc by the artist, made up of thousands of ‘single’ pieces, was conceived along these lines: there are 8928 spray can caps, hand-painted one by one. With an anti-hierarchical approach, Omar Hassan has developed a particular focus on the theme of places, to be understood as genuine aggregation and socialisation hubs.
The exhibition stems from an authentic dialogue between Omar and the Federico II Foundation which once again rejects pre-packaged exhibitions. Through a dialogue between the complexity of places and the work of art, the Federico II Foundation proposes a new narrative and welcomes one of the witnesses of the art of our time. A precise cultural will that wants to support a dialogue between a space of memory and contemporary art.
Omar Hassan is an artist engaged in a production characterized by a strong energy, vitality and action, capable of reviving classical art, to re-read it and offer a remodulation.
PUNCTUM at Palazzo Reale wants to be the gaze of art on the way. The further nourishment of that energy which makes the artist like life itself.
Fifteen works on display, 7 of which site specific, created by Omar Hassan for PUNCTUM. These include the Map of Palermo and “Pax”, a sculpture that depicts a courageous reinterpretation of the Nike of Samothrace, generator of peace.
