Midas Modern – Crossfire Fields 5, The Human Destruction of the Environment 1993

Ali Omar Ermes made this striking painting, ‘Midas Modern – Crossfire Fields 5,’ with what looks like acrylic and ink, building up layers of color and calligraphy. The process feels almost archaeological, like digging through strata of meaning and history. The surface has this amazing tension between chaos and control. Splatters and drips mingle with these careful, swirling calligraphic forms. The colors—muted purples, oranges, and yellows—create a kind of melancholic harmony. Look closely at how the white ink of the calligraphy sits on top of the colored washes, like a ghostly script trying to emerge from the depths. It's a powerful visual metaphor for memory and loss, and the environmental destruction that Ermes is referencing in the title. It puts me in mind of Cy Twombly's scrawling, poetic surfaces, but with a completely different cultural and political inflection. Both artists, though, remind us that painting is a kind of thinking—a way of grappling with complex ideas through the messy, unpredictable act of making marks.