Arbi Jaballah

One of the Vienna artworld’s rising stars, Arbi Jaballah collides the intuition of an outsider with the refined technique of the academy in his vibrant and often haunting artworks. Growing up, Jaballah spent much of his childhood years silently engrossed in his sketchbook, sometimes with a skateboard in tow. A visit to his extended family in Tunisia was a formative one in developing a sense of alienation, as Jaballah, who could only speak German, felt the effects of a tangible language barrier and a schooling system that saw his left-handed penmanship as something abnormal to be suppressed. Later, studying at the Akademie under Daniel Richter, Jaballah would refine his previously self-taught techniques, becoming ‘another artist’ in the process. Nevertheless the introspection and emotion of those early solitary days still infuses Jaballahs vivid depictions of social life that collapse the distinction between the city and the jungle.

An intuitive artist, Arbi Jaballah’s chosen medium is oil on canvas as he favours the wide scope that canvas allows for his explorations, often choosing to paint large scale paintings brimming with characteristic frisson.

Submitted by sensegallery.art