Living the Dream 2022/23

— << Living the Dream Cultural Project>> —

Living the Dream Series

Khawam’s work stems from his interest in histories, human emotion, allusions to place, memory, and the ubiquitous fleeting moments of the conscious and unconscious. The recent work has iconic undertones with a focus on the artist’s fascination with historical imagery of figures specifically women who were the subject of influence at their time intertwined with today’s modern women contributions to our culture to empower women to reach their potentials. The figures are from the ancient Mesopotamian, Assyrian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, with influences of post-war German and American art adopted into his daily artistic and structural practices with the current surroundings and happenings by marrying a skewed perspective with dimensional flatness, his paintings allude to the continuous development of the American culture.

The past and present of “Living the Dream” make the case for the way art and its language of color, line, and shape enrich a viewer’s experience of the work and offer a delicate balance between representation and abstraction, mirroring the real and unreal ways in which he paints lived experience. Moreover, his myriad mediums including acrylic, colored pastel, and spray paint further referencing painterly collage in a more experimental and risk-taking approach. The new work features historical and modern figures, social commentary, fashion motifs, everyday objects, pop culture ads, cartoons, film, and Florida flora and fauna that inhabit flat, kaleidoscopic surfaces. The artist’ dialogue with the traditions of the past interwoven with his participation in current global artistic discussions. This simultaneous engagement with the past, present, and future speaks to a singular creative presence. The new work is charged with a rawness produced by an ambiguous method to narrative and a fractal, unfinished approach to representing the subjects of the paintings. Characters appearing to piece themselves together from aggregated painterly gestures, these forms become figures of power and personal freedom through their abjection.