Houssam Ballan invites the viewer on a metaphysical journey of visual estrangement. The series of paintings begins with the nocturnal silence of ghostly arches that detonate into a sequence of abstractions and distortions around the trope of the arch. Silence becomes noise, and nocturnal hues turn into acrid yellows, electric pinks, and greens as Ballan plays with structure and form. The result is a thrilling realm of exaggerated perspectives and illogical cityscapes charged with visual reverberation that are almost sonorous. The monolithic arches casting electric shadows repeat broken yet ceaseless to reproduce the experience of a cosmic unease.

Hussam Ballan is a Syrian artist (b.1982) based in Beirut. He began his practice in 2007, after having received his degree from the University of Damascus. His works brush on Islamic forms and meditate on questions of alienation and longing for familiar places.