MOHAMMAD OMER KHALIL: Paintings and Prints

Press Release

MOHAMMAD OMER KHALIL
March 7th – April 13th, 2002

Press Release

Skoto Gallery is delighted to present an exhibition of paintings and prints by master printmaker Mohammad Omer Khalil. The opening reception is Thursday, March 7th, 6:00 – 8:00pm and the artist will be present.

Mohammad Omer Khalil’s artistic expression reflects multiple influences and experiences acquired during his formative years in the Sudan; his extensive travels to various parts of the world; and in New York City where he has lived and practised since the late 1960s.

Khalil’s work speaks a multilayered language that is at once personal and collective. His art has developed its own iconography created from symbols that include postage stamps, envelopes, photography, fabrics, crushed cans and precious little objects etc. With these he develops subtle patterns with mosaic-like delicacy and a cosmopolitan refinement. Symbols become patterns and then symbols again as the imagery vacillates between the seen and unseen, between the remembered and the disassociated, revealing minute treasures for those who linger long enough to see them revealed.

Mohammad Omer Khalil was born in Burri, Sudan in 1936 and graduated from the School of Fine and Applied Art, Khartoum in 1959. He proceeded to Florence, Italy for further studies in 1963. In Florence, he studied fresco painting and also developed his printmaking techniques. He has been living in the US for over 30 years where he has taught at several institutions in New York City such as New York University, Columbia University, Pratt Institute and The New School University among others. As a master printmaker in his own printmaking atelier in New York, his commissions include printing editions for internationally known artists Louise Nevelson, Romare Bearden and Jim Dine.

He has also participated in numerous exhibitions in Africa, Middle East, Europe, Asia and the Americas. His work is in the collection of several public and private collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, Grenoble Museum, Grenoble, France, Jordanian National Museum, Amman, Jordan, Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, Baghdad, Iraq, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC; Chamaliers Museum, France and Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris.