Madhat Kakei | Heliga stenar
Madhat Kakei is an internationally renowned artist who, in spite of his long career, has maintained a relatively low profile in Sweden. Previous solo exhibitions include Moderna Museet (2015), Kungliga Konstakademien (2006), and Galerie Aronowitsch (2001), and his work has attracted great attention from art critics and leading institutional representatives alike – besides having been celebrated in poems by Tomas Tranströmer and the Syrian poet Adonis.
We are proud to present Kakei's first exhibition in Stockholm since the exhibition at Moderna Museet in 2015. This also happens to be his first solo exhibition at a Swedish gallery since 2001, when his work was presented at the groundbreaking Galerie Aronowitsch.
In the exhibition Heliga stenar ('Sacred stones'), the viewer is faced with a series of paintings spanning over a period of thirty years, reflecting Kakei's increasingly palpable interest in surface, texture, and paint as a three-dimensional medium.
Throughout his career, Madhat Kakei has devoted himself to developing a unique painterly expression that challenges both traditional painting and the monochrome tradition. His paintings are built up by numerous, heavy layers of paint applied to the canvas with a spatula. In some works, the various layers of paint are only visible directly from the side of the canvas, inadvertently evoking compressed strata of sediment or rock. In other works, the layers are revealed through a gradual displacement of the painted surface, as if Kakei sought to uncover the interior of the painting in some sort of reverse archeology.
Over the years, Kakei's paintings have become increasingly sculptural, his textured surfaces appearing more and more like a topography or an irregular cliff wall. The title of the exhibition refers to the mountainous region stretching from the Taurus Mountains in the north to the Zagros in the southeast: Kurdistan. For many Kurds, the mountains are a symbol of considerable religious, historical and cultural importance, as reflected in the Kurdish proverb: "[We have] no friends but the mountains."
"Madhat Kakei, Tomas Tranströmer suggests, paints what the eye cannot see: 'Consciousness has its spaces / to which we are taken blindfolded'." – Daniel Birnbaum
"Unlike most monochrome painting, Madhat Kakei's paintings are explosive, laden with meaning, full of joy and sorrow; permeated by a light both ruthless and conciliatory." – Olle Granath
Madhat Kakei (b. 1954 in Kirkuk, Kurdistan) is educated at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid (1976-80) and the Institute of Fine Arts, Baghdad (1971-76) and moved to Sweden in the mid-1980s. Kakei is based in Stockholm but splits his time between his four different studios in Sweden, France and Japan. Previous solo exhibitions include Akutsu Gallery, Maibashi (2019, 2017), Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2015), Gallery Aro, Sulaymaniyya (2015), Alisara, Kirkuk (2013), Gallery Mutsu, Japan (2012), Konstnärshuset, Stockholm (2011), Formes Gallery, Tokyo (2010), Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm (2006), Galerie Maria Lund, Paris (2005), The Kurdish Library and Museum, New York (2005) and Galerie Aronowitsch, Stockholm (2001).
