Tammam Azzam: A Horizon Remains
Exhibition|First solo exhibition in New York and institutional presentation in the US of Syrian-German artist
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Goethe-Institut New York, New York, NY
- Price Free
September 16, 6:00-8:30pm
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Monday - Thursday, 10am-6pm
The Goethe-Institut New York is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in New York and the first institutional presentation in the United States of Syrian-German artist Tammam Azzam. Bringing together paintings, collages, and works on paper, Tammam Azzam: A Horizon Remains focuses on a body of work centered on Azzam's sustained engagement with the city as landscape.
At a moment when images of the ruined city have become an increasingly familiar visual language, Azzam reimagines them through painting. Cities and urban forms accumulate, recede, and gradually open onto expansive terrains and distant horizons. Richly layered compositions invite the eye to move continuously across the surface, revealing cityscapes whose depth and complexity extend far beyond the images from which they emerge.
Whether shaped by war, natural disasters, or archaeological remains, Azzam’s works emerge from architectural fragments. Yet rather than documenting ruin, the artist begins with it, recognizing it as an enduring condition of the built environment and transforming the city into landscapes that speak as much to human making as to human unmaking.
Central to the exhibition are the artistic lineages informing Azzam's practice. Like his teacher, Marwan Kassab-Bachi, who repeatedly returned to his own face as a motif until it dissolved into landscape, Azzam revisits the city with similar persistence. Further developed during his years in Germany, this sustained investigation enters into dialogue with the traditions of postwar German painting.
Azzam constructs images in which accumulated fragments, expressive brushwork, color, and atmosphere cohere into a singular pictorial language. This exhibition positions Azzam within a generation of artists who have returned to the city not simply as a subject to be depicted, but as a site through which the possibilities of painting continue to be reimagined.
Curated by Saria AlMidani
Coordinated by Zachary B. Feldman, Curator of Visual Arts & Programs at Goethe-Institut New York.
This exhibition was generously supported by KORNFELD Galerie Berlin and Ayyam Gallery Dubai.
Biographies
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Tammam Azzam
Artist
Tammam Azzam is a Syrian-German artist whose multidisciplinary practice spans painting, collage, sculpture, installation, and works on paper. Born in Damascus in 1980, he studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Damascus University before relocating to Germany, where he has lived and worked since 2016. His work examines the city, landscape, and the built environment, exploring the ways architecture, memory, and history are continually transformed through painting and image-making. Azzam has exhibited internationally at institutions and biennials across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and North America, and his works are held in numerous public and private collections.
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Saria AlMidani
Curator
Saria AlMidani is a writer, researcher, and curator. He is the Curatorial Department’s Assistant at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, where he contributes to exhibitions, publications, acquisitions, and collections management. His research and writing focus on modern and contemporary art from the Middle East, with particular interests in museum histories, collections, and cultural memory. His work has appeared in Aljumhuriya, Syria Untold, and Jeem, among other publications. He is the co-author, with Dr. Anneka Lenssen, of a forthcoming essay on Syrian artist Moustafa Fathi to be published in Chronicle of the 1980s: Representational Pressures, Departures, and Beginnings in the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey. In 2026, AlMidani was awarded Ettijahat – Independent Culture's Research: To Strengthen the Culture of Knowledge grant, through which he is developing research on the making of Syrian art history through museums, collections, and public memory.
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Location
30 Irving Place
New York, NY 10003
USA
Registration not required
