Palestinian Lebanese artist Mohamad El Dreini tells a true story through the 22 paintings on display in Dar al Mussawir as part of his exhibition, Overthinking.
Visitors walk along a path planted with faces. Some are suffocating, others are despondent and overwhelmed, and some are surrounded by black circles and spots. Together, they tell us Mohamad’s story with overthinking.
It was a draining phase I went through. These faces were thoughts that followed me “until I found a way to get rid of them,” Mohamad says as he explains his work. The way he sees it, each of us could go through a phase in which they overthink, but only the overthinker can solve their crisis.
Did he find his remedy in painting faces? In his conversation with Asharq Al-Awsat, Mohamad says: “My aim for the exhibition is to ring the alarm bells for everyone suffering from this condition. Those reading my paintings’ lines will understand that this phase often begins with melancholy. I didn’t know what hit me, but I found it all out and understood what I had gone through and been suffering from through my paintings.”
Mohamad would keep painting these faces, but he quickly realized that they belonged to the same person. The many faces spread across his paintings represent thoughts he had and speak to his struggles with them, and each of the paintings represents a phase he had gone through.
Some faces are intertwined with others, and some faces are drawn close together; others are of people in a group meeting each other. The darkness comes out of them in the form of circles, which Mohamad sometimes makes by applying charcoal against a white canvas, affirming that they are just emotions, not anger.
“It is not just an explosion of thoughts, but a mixture of tranquility, joy and sadness that come together, at the same time, into the mind of the person feeling them. These colors covering the paintings represent the feelings they have and the psychological states they are in.
He generally prefers using charcoal and acrylic to make his paintings. “The contrast charcoal creates when put in acrylic is very clear, especially in translating deep thoughts. As for my use of ink in other paintings, I do so because it helps me elucidate the matters I address in those works.”
When we reach the series of paintings on the threat of demise, which is represented through swollen faces, he explains:
“These kinds of thoughts become rooted in our minds, and that is what I wanted to say in my paintings. We find it difficult to get rid of them. That is why visitors see these transformations. They start with black faces, and then others are surrounded by colorful bubbles, signifying the advice others give us here and this. In the last stage, we see a change in the faces after having contemplated how they had overcome their problems.”
