Taher Jaoui’s Solo Show Opens With A Full House at 81 Leonard Gallery

Uncommon Beauty Gallery
February 17, 2020

Thanks to everyone who attended the opening reception of Controlled Entropy, Taher Jaoui’s first United States solo show, which opened to the public on Friday, February 7th at 81 Leonard Gallery. As indicated by the exhibition title, Jaoui’s work reflects the playground of a free soul, but with aspects of the rational mind, just like Jaoui himself. Growing up in a scientists’ family, Jaoui was once a financial engineer. He was an actor before becoming a visual artist, and it was through acting that he learned to use body and movement to convey his feelings — much as he now does in his art.  He was also inspired by early Abstract Expressionistic theories that consider ideas of quantum mechanics in the conceptualization. As a result, Jaoui’s work displays both intuition and reason.  This eloquent mix of right-brain left-brain expression on the canvas and represented in three-dimensions seemed to resonate deeply with the diverse crowd who attended the opening.

The show is particularly significant for the Berlin-based artist as he revealed three new bodies of paintings from 2019 as well as his first foray into sculpture with a brand new 3-D printed piece from 2020. With the use of 3-D printed material as a medium just beginning to enter the art market, Jaoui is undoubtedly a pioneer of this practice. This complex sculpture is created from dozens of colorful 3D-printed pieces, all hand-mounted into a sophisticated, intertwined structure. It is a 3-D representation of a 2019 painting, now in a private collection.