I thought I saw figures in black crossing the squares of the city and standing on its flat rooftops, the sort of figures painters casually sketch in to give a scene a sense of life and scale. But there was actually no one there, just black and white flecks floating down on the clusters of buildings under a dark sky. Ashfall, by Iraqi-born painter Mohammad Sami, is an unpeopled and silent aftermath.
Clogged, compressed, scraped down, sprayed, loosely brushed: the surfaces of Sami’s paintings have been through a lot. They evidence turmoil, however quiet the images they describe appear. This is deceptive. Sami’s paintings are filled with doubts and ambiguities. You can’t always be sure what you’re looking at and the paintings often say one thing, their titles another. A gilded, upholstered throne is called Electric Chair, and a huge painting of what appear to be piles of shirts (are they collars of military shirts?) is titled Study of Guts. In The Parliament Room, rows of unoccupied chairs recede into darkness. They look like headstones.
