CAN YOU SEE 2011

This work, Can You See, by Rashid Al Khalifa, seems to be made with a stark monochrome palette of black lines on a white ground, a visual experience stripped down to its bare essentials. It's like a meditation on seeing itself, or a thought about mark-making. There’s something so direct and raw about the marks, right? The lines, so many of them, all converging, like strands of energy being pulled into one point, or radiating out from it. It’s fascinating how the simplicity of the materials – just black on white – can create such a complex visual texture. You can almost feel the artist's hand in each stroke, the rhythm of the gesture, the weight of the line as it hits the surface. It's like a visual echo of the artist's own process, laid bare for us to see. It reminds me a bit of some of Brice Marden's linear works, where the repetition of simple gestures builds up a whole world of feeling. But here, there’s a kind of urgency, a directness that feels very present. It’s like Khalifa is asking us not just to look, but to really *see*.