Raafat Ballan
These People Could Be Anyone
—
Centraal Museum Utrecht
-
Adress:
Agnietenstraat 1,
3512 XA Utrecht
At Utrecht Lokaal, Raafat Ballan’s paintings hang alongside his sources of inspiration: from poems to stories from art history. The human figures in Raafat Ballan’s paintings seem to step into the light. That’s because he always starts with a completely black canvas. Over the black, Ballan first draws with a crayon and then paints his representation with different colours of paint.
Raafat Ballan (Al-Suwayda, Syria, 1990) studied at the art academy in Damascus, Syria. Shortly after his graduation, he was forced to leave Syria due to increasing insecurity in his country. Temporarily, he lived and worked in Lebanon and then in Turkey. In 2015, he settled in the Netherlands.