GOMMAAR GILLIAMS, Amber Hour, 2024
D104
For ZONAMACO 2025, Nil Gallery presents four contemporary artists—Simon Buret, Gommaar Gilliams, Malik Thomas, and Anaïs Maar—who each explore the expressive possibilities of abstraction while weaving personal and cultural narratives into their work. Through dynamic compositions, layered symbolism, and innovative material approaches, they create visual worlds that are both introspective and universal.
Simon Buret’s multidisciplinary practice spans painting, drawing, and mixed media, embracing spontaneity and raw textures to explore themes of human vulnerability and resilience. His works, often incorporating unconventional materials like grease pencil and coffee grounds, evoke a delicate balance between chaos and harmony. Buret sees painting as an intimate act—a “small prayer” that invites contemplation, offering a quiet space for viewers to engage with the complexities of identity and transformation.
Gommaar Gilliams draws from Abstract Expressionism to create poetic, dreamlike compositions infused with layered symbolism. Inspired by both European and Middle Eastern traditions, his works blend gestural abstraction with recurring motifs of celestial bodies, mythic figures, and animals in motion. His fresco-like approach, using acrylic dyes, oil paints, and raw pigments, results in richly textured surfaces where narratives unfold organically. Gilliams’ work reflects a constant dialogue between past and present, memory and imagination, figuration and abstraction.
Malik Thomas merges fine art and textile-based techniques to examine themes of identity, longing, and emotional intimacy. With a practice informed by his Iraqi heritage and experiences in the Arab world, he creates delicately layered compositions, often painted on hand-dyed silk, cotton, and wool. His depictions of the male figure, infused with calligraphic gestures and woven patterns, blur the lines between personal memory and cultural tradition. Through his use of fabric as both a medium and a symbol, Thomas explores the fragile yet enduring nature of human connection.
Anaïs Maar constructs intricate, layered narratives that challenge conventional representations of femininity, identity, and mythology. Drawing from her background in illustration and animation, she employs vibrant palettes and dynamic compositions that oscillate between structure and fluidity. Influenced by Fauvism, Cubism, and medieval mythology, her work moves between abstraction and figuration, symbolism and spontaneity, creating a visual language that is both visceral and poetic. For Maar, painting is an elemental force—both an act of rebellion and a means of introspection, capturing the tension between instinct and control.
Together, these four artists redefine contemporary abstraction, transforming color, form, and material into vessels for emotion, memory, and storytelling. Their works exist in a space where past and present intertwine, where gesture and meaning coalesce, and where each canvas serves as an invitation—to reflect, to dream, to feel.
