Girls Walking 2011

Aboudia made this painting, Girls Walking, with acrylic and collage, and what strikes me is that he dives right into it. The canvas is so alive with the sense of artmaking as a process. The material aspects of the work, the texture, the colors, the surface, the physicality, all contribute to an emotional experience. See how the paint is applied in thin, transparent layers, yet in other areas, there are dense, opaque passages. Look at the bottom right of the canvas, the dripping orange paint. The way it interacts with the figures above, it's almost as if they are melting before our eyes. There is so much going on that it seems to invite multiple readings. Aboudia's work is akin to that of Jean-Michel Basquiat, another artist who embraced raw expression. Like Basquiat, Aboudia seems to embrace ambiguity and resists fixed interpretations, which is what makes the work so compelling.