Imagine a potter sitting at his workshop molding a piece of iron instead of clay on a spinning wheel. Impossible! Well, Iraqi artist Ahmed Al Bahrani not only did that but he vividly administered the most ancient of arts and that’s welding iron into sculptures.

By fusing iron sheets together Al Bahrani was like a minister performing a holy union. Iron over iron and matter over matter is a phrase that would come into one’s mind for what is more beautiful than the birth of a unique article as a result of bits and pieces amalgamated into one.

 Strolling amidst the 32 metallic pieces exhibited at 4Walls, one can envision, even for a brief moment, Al Bahrani working his fingers. Welding pieces into one another Al Bahrani creates a four-dimensional sculpture comprising of different pieces. Using a rocket grinder he trims the edges of the piece before placing it on an iron sheet that formulates its base. The end result is a captivating work of art.

 Born in 1965 in Babylon, Al Bahrani graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Baghdad in 1988. He taught sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts between the years 1992-1994 and held numerous solo exhibitions in Yemen, Qatar, UAE and Jordan in addition to group exhibitions in Iraq and elsewhere. He also created several sculptures for public areas.

 “I worked with stone and marble but I always wanted to be different from others ever since I was a kid. That is why I decided to work with iron even though artistically speaking it is a consumed material but the forms and shapes I come up with give my art its uniqueness,” Al Bahrani told The Star Gazing at his metallic creations a person can easily remember how men since the down of civilization used hammers and anvils to forge iron to their wills. What really captures one’s attention is not the manner by which Al Bahrani’s works were conceived but the strong sense of gravitation they transmit.

 It is as if the pieces forming his sculptures are affixed to each other by a magnetic force that gives the illusion of hovering in mid space. The half-shinny half-grinded-to-a-matt surface of the pieces that mirrored its surrounding added a futuristic touch to Al Bahrani’s works knowing the primitive manner by which they were created. Verbatim the way people perceive robots as things belonging to the future—whereas they are in fact created by man thus man helps in molding how the future will eventually look like.

 “I believe that any artistic or creative work should tread on futuristic margins. If it doesn’t then it is not creative for you don’t want to end up recreating classical works,” commented the artist, who avid believer in the universality of an artist. “I’m an Arab. Don’t get me wrong I have pride in being an Iraqi but I’m also that I’m a Moroccan, a Palestinian, a Sudanese and an Egyptian.”

 The peeled out core of a perpendicular square with uneven edges comes as a striking image of the simplicity of Al Bahrani’s work in terms of concept. How many times a person has stepped on iron peelings lying on the floor of a workshop next to a drilling machine? How many would utilize such a shape to create a sculpture? Very few and this is what artists do; they see the hidden beauty of objects that many people might consider as nothing but the glut of an industrial process.

 But hanging a wooden frame with worn off paint with a piece of newspaper collaged to it with rusty nails coming out of its edges is certainly not art in case you ask. Just because some artists charge JD 1,000 a piece doesn’t mean its art.

Looking at it straight from the middle it comes out as an ordinary square, however, a sideway glance would expose its uneven conic horizontal shape. At the center of the exhibition one will find metallic curls aligned haphazardly over one another. Bahrani’s bended, twirled and well-balanced sculptures appear to stand by their own, thanks to his brilliant usage of the lower end of each iron curl that allowed the shape—an octopus-like figure—to stand on its own.
 
“Iron is a dull material that it is why it is used in construction. It is hard and solid that is why I try through my work to provide it with some passion, which is not an easy thing to do. People in the West love to use and the way they use it transmit their inner emotions and that is coldness, whereas we Arabs are passionate and I try to work on that in what I create. What I am trying to do is treat iron like clay because I grew up in an agricultural environment,” Al Bahrani explained on the reason behind he chose to work with iron. “All my works convey passion and it was very tough at the beginning for me to get people accept my works.”

 Adjoined together his circular halves convey to the eye a warped effect. On close inspection they quickly part allowing the gaps between each half to emerge. One of the good aspects of Al Bahrani’s work is that they can be positioned at any angle and their effect on the viewer would still be the same: Haunting, distant and cold yet appealing.