Living Multiplicity: Nour Malas
— The Arts Club, London 14 September 2026 — 24 January 2027

Living Multiplicity is a solo presentation of paintings and works on paper by New York-based artist Nour Malas. Inspired by her Syrian upbringing, Malas’ work is shaped by the vantage point of searching: of growing up and adapting to multiple, overlapping places, one of them long held only in memory. Her marks are gestural and unplanned, laid down at speed and left visible: each canvas carries the record of its own making. As Malas puts it, the images she paints “are always running away” from her.

Working without sketches or preparatory studies, Malas meets the blank canvas directly and lets each painting find its own shape as it develops. Figures surface from beneath the layers, settling into compositions that hold figuration and abstraction in tension rather than choosing between them. Earthy reds, browns and greens are cut through with sudden passages of pink, blue or yellow; a vocabulary of colour through which the exhibition’s key themes of vulnerability, memory, the pull between presence and absence, and letting it all go, emerge.

Special thanks to the artist, Carbon 12 Gallery and the private collectors, whose loaned works have been integral in bringing this show to fruition.