Driss Ouadahi, "Breakthrough," 2012, oil on canvas, 78 3/4 x 141 3/4 inches (diptych)
Originally trained as an architect, Ouadahi seems keenly aware of the failures of modernist urban planning, while also open to the intoxication of the endless grids and semi-abstract vistas to be found in massive apartment blocks. That ambivalence, as his sterile-feeling plots mutate into lush color and disorienting perspective, lends a human and subjective note to large paintings where traces of the human figure are conspicuously absent.
