Diana Al-Hadid’s Trace of a Fictional Third
Exhibition organized by Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Mar 10, 2012–Nov 25, 2011
with support from the Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York
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| Diana Al-Hadid Trace of a Fictional Third, 2011 Steel, polymer gypsum, wood, fiberglass, paint. Courtesy of the George Economou Collection. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Photos: Travis Fullerton © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts |
Al-Hadid’s sculptures often seem in a state of flux, suggesting both incompletion and decay. A wide array of sources underlie her complex forms, including Biblical and mythological narratives, Arab oral traditions, Gothic architecture, Western painting, Islamic ornamentation, and scientific advances in physics and astronomy.
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In Trace of a Fictional Third, landscape, architecture, and the human figure are interwoven. Here Al-Hadid revisits time and motion in the sculpture’s cascades, undulating fabrics, and human figures that seem both corporeal and spectral.
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The sculpture rises from a cluster of pedestals to form an irregular pyramid. Two figures—one low, the other high—and the viewer, implicated as the “fictional” third figure, form points of an overall triangle.
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Elements of painting are also present, with horizon lines and linear perspective, puddles and drips of color, and imagery suggesting mountains and clouds in an open-ended, dreamlike scene.
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