The Painting and Printmaking Department at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar (VCUQ) and Hamad Bin Khalifa University Student Centre Art Gallery will present Gaseous Abstraction, a two-person exhibition with Artists in Residence Kelley Lowe and Christine Wang.

The exhibition that will run from April 27 to May 9 at the HBKU Student Centre Art Gallery in Education City, is open to public.

The exhibition emphasises the art gallery’s ambition to show contemporary, progressive and relevant exhibitions to the students and faculty of HBKU, and the general public.

Gaseous Abstraction brings together two separate approaches to critiquing the common contemporary condition of over-consumption.

The show attempts to “slow down” the cycle of material consumption by creating space for the viewer to contemplate the formal qualities of materials that are so easily and quickly created, consumed and discarded.

Lowe’s work features prints, sculptural installations, and paintings all of which have some element of objects gleaned from the Doha landscape. In the packaging, transporting and assembling of materials what is left over is used to create a visual language that attempts to compliment the development of the city.

Wang draws from a variety of pop and historical representative images that become allegorical when appropriated into a contemporary art setting. The allegory of the angel of judgment represents abstracted ideas of the consequences of global warming.

Wang’s images seek to undo the abstraction of the effects of global consumption by literalising the iconic effects of climate change using symbols, text and pictures.

Lowe who comes from  Milan, Italy has a BFA in Painting and Printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.

Wang hails from Washington, DC and  received her MFA from UCLA and her BFA from The Cooper Union.