Falling Down

Carl Hammoud has an almost manic obsession with details. His paintings sometimes remind me of the surrealists of the 1920s, but also of the American sentimentalists like Edward Hopper. The pictures are somehow busy and quiet at the same time.

And the colours… what can be said about those colours? On commentator suggested that they are "Disney-like", but to me they look like realism with a twist. Like if they were painted by Peter Tillberg with coloured shades on him. Whatever you say about the colours in Hammoud’s paintings, subtle they are not. They are as important to the visual expression of his work as ever the actual content.

Born in 1976 he is still a very young artist. That being said some of the most interesting questions are raised by the way his art has developed over the last few years. From the clear cold light and almost neon colours of, for example, his painting b (by the) from 2003, to a much darker world falling apart at the seems in The Spirit of Enterprise from 2005, leaving only ruins left in the recently produced Epilouge.

What is happening here? Is the artist falling apart, or is he saying that the world is falling apart. Is art falling apart? If so, what is next?