CARL HAMMOUD

“To paint or draw is to create something from nothing. A window into something else. A subjective space where anything can happen.”

The artist, Carl Hammoud, was educated at the Valand Academy of the Arts in Gothenburg between 1999 and 2004, and now lives and works in Stockholm. Carl Hammoud’s precisely reproduced and meticulously lit motifs may be recognizable and mundane but are, at the same time, loaded with a dry, objective surrealism. He turns our perceptions inside out with brain-teasers, optical illusions and illusions of perception.

Motivation:
Carl Hammoud’s works are characterized by concentrated observation and a feverish preoccupation with details and fragments. Recurrent themes are trust in art as a language and vessel, but also distrust of the image’s authority and awareness of its transience. The paintings zoom in and out, moving among remnants and ruins of our time. In a wider perspective, Carl Hammoud’s work is also about demarcation, examining the shift between memory and fiction, as well as questioning structures that define the fragile conditions of humans and civilization.

For artistry that combines close-fitting precision with the melancholy of uncertainty, Carl Hammoud is awarded a 2020 scholarship from the Sten A Olsson Foundation for Research and Culture.