Seeing Ourselves Seeing
Mise en Abyme an exhibition by Carl Hammoud at Lora Reynolds Gallery
1126 West 6th Street Austin, Texas
Do you ever feel stuck in a rapidly changing world that is fighting for your attention through algorithms and technological invention. Maybe that’s just me but I don’t think so. In a world oversaturated with images, where the screen often replaces the many scenes celebrating life, art and its vast culture. Carl Hammoud’s Mise en Abyme invites visitors to slow down and truly look at a world of constant stimulation and information. The exhibition, currently on view at Lora Reynolds Gallery a pristine white-cube space, is named after a term from literary and visual theory that literally means “placed into abyss.” It describes the recursive effect of a picture within a picture, sort of like the infinite regression of two mirrors facing one another. But in Hammoud’s case, the term expands beyond clever visual play. It becomes a lens through which the viewer must navigate the emotional, cognitive, and visual weight of image-making itself.
As both an artist and a student immersed in studio practice, walking into the exhibition felt like stepping into a slow, soothing meditation focused on the representation of the ordinary through painting. My own paintings are nothing like these, in fact they may be quite the opposite. My work is composed of sloppy, loose lines, literally blurred between fiction and reality. It was quite refreshing looking at Hammoud’s works as I had been in the studio staring at mine for far too long. The show was composed of modestly scaled paintings, spaced with ample room to breathe, they almost asked for silence. The works are figurative, but not narrative in the traditional sense. They are precise, calculated, rendered with a cool, sharp attention to surface and structure. And yet, beneath that control there is vulnerability, mystery, and something that feels out of reach even if it is easily recognizable or maybe even mundane.
To understand why Mise en Abyme matters is to understand what Hammoud is doing with the conventions of figurative painting. Unlike other recent contemporary shows filled with shock factor and loud artistic actions such as Barry McGee’s recent exhibition Cherry Pit at The Hole Los Angeles which made use of the entire space filling nearly every wall top to bottom and cutting a hole into one of the walls for easy access to the rest of the show. Or the news of a recent show titled: Long Dark Tunnel, an immersive exhibition by some of London’s most infamous graffiti writers 10foot, Tox, and Fume at a secret exhibition near London’s Picadilly Circus station paying homage to London’s underground train system and historical graffiti. Unfortunately, the exhibition headlined for being abruptly shut down 3 weeks after its opening due to tags sprayed on the outside walls of the venue and nearby buildings reading “F#ck the king”. The show’s participants were upset as they were not responsible for the tags but were treated unfairly after being confronted by the Crown Estate. While Hammoud’s exhibition doesn’t scream for your attention; it doesn’t rely on loud cries. Instead, it asks a deeper simple question: what happens when we slow down enough to observe observation itself?
An Anthology of Human consciousness was the title of the first painting I looked at. This vertical triptych starts with a composition picturing a young girl, hunched over a table, pencil in hand, absorbed in drawing. Her body emphasizes movement through the faded imprint of her figure leaving the body, her eyes are cast downward, locked in concentration. Her T-shirt, loosely painted, has words that I wish I could have made out. This touch added to the mystery of the work. The painted figure is caught in the act of creation, yet she is entirely alone, self-contained, uninterested in the viewer’s gaze. She is only accompanied by the paintings below her that also embody a sense of isolation.
Formally, the painting is rendered in muted browns, soft peaches, and creamy whites, giving it a warm, intimate tone. But these colors do not import sentimentality. The composition is tightly cropped; the girl’s body framed closely to the edges as if she is about to fall out of the canvas. The brushwork is smooth but not too slick; Hammoud allows certain marks to remain visible, especially in the girl’s hair and hands, subtly revealing the artist’s hand and reminding us of the process behind the product. I always appreciate these marks as I believe painting loses a hint of the human element when it is smooth licked and perfect, hiding any rough marks.
As the figure draws, we look. As she chooses where to place her pencil, we choose how to interpret the scene. Hammoud doesn’t just depict. He reflects on the act of depiction; this idea is important because he is adding a fresh layer to the usual conventions of figurative painting, something I continued to think about as I viewed the rest of his work.
In the following work of the triptych, Hammoud turns his attention to space and the structures that frame our movement through the world. One component of this painting that paused me momentarily due to its precision depicts a modern stairwell, viewed from above. The stairs zigzag with accuracy, bordered by a sharp black railing. The perspective on this painting was intriguing because the perspective in the painting mimics the viewpoint of a surveillance camera or a ghost floating above. The composition suggests that the Light is casted in through a window which forms shadows perhaps relating to the passage of time or constantly moving world. This photogenic painting is created with a restrained palette, it is made up of gray, beige, and black. The geometry truly blew me away as I always have a difficult time painting well calculated structural design and architecture. This is a basic structure, but I began to view the stairwell as a visual metaphor for descent (or ascent?). It almost seems like this place belongs to an institution. The shadows cast by the railing remind me of the passage of time. Had there been a figure in this composition I think my feelings would have changed. This is a painting that suggests containment, routine, and a quietly moving life.
Hammoud’s formal choices of sharp lines, flattened planes, and a sharp perspective seem to mimic the feelings and emotions of human constraint. His images invite me to question not just what I see, but how I am positioned in relation to it. Do ways of painting extend or become a metaphor for ways of seeing? How can one surveil through the act of painting? At the very bottom of the triptych hangs a painting of a tumultuous ocean. This work feels almost out of place amid the architectural rigidity of the others. The water moves with violent energy brushstrokes are looser, more expressive. The sea is rendered in deep greens and dark blues, topped with foam. There’s no land in sight, just the endless ocean. This work balanced the rest of the painting in a beautiful way by organizing the work in the show into 3 visual categories. Starting with the vertical triptych depicting the figure, manmade structure, and naturalistic scene. These elements served as a key component to better understand Hammouds work as continued to make my way through the gallery. There was one other painting depicting an ocean view, this work was the closest to the Main desk but the choice of the initial oceanic painting being included in the triptych made me feel different about that natural representation due to its grouping in the triptych.
It’s hard not to read the triptych as a metaphor for the unconscious. Placed beneath the stairwell (institutional structure) and the girl drawing (cognitive focus), the ocean can serve as the base layer of the mind, the place where thoughts emerge and disappear. This is where Hammoud’s mastery becomes fully apparent. The curation of the compositions spatially adds to the value of his work by minimizing it in size Hammoud makes up in the depth of the painting. This is where he produces a kind of psychological layering. In this case the negative space holds a lot of weight by refining the viewers focus. He moves from childlike creation to structural order, to chaotic yet natural emotion. And all this within three modest paintings on a wall.
I want to go back to his choice of scale because that really is what made these paintings modest and approachable as I imagine myself painting in this scale. I am used to seeing large-scale paintings and installations existing in the world of contemporary art such as Christine Tien Wang ‘s last solo at the hole nyc which was composed of large-scale paintings of crypto memes. The current large-scale Kaws installation Holiday in Thailand is a great example of a larger-than-life installation. It is refreshing to see smaller works by established artists; there is something deeply intimate about looking at a smaller painting and having to position yourself closer to see the vastness of something small. The ocean, like the concept of mise en abyme itself, is a place without a clear bottom. It refuses stability. It demands surrender. I always feel so small when I am near the ocean. And in the context of the exhibition, it also points toward the vastness of what we cannot control: our dreams, our fears and the things that swirl beneath the surface of our contained, rational minds.
A single painting of autumn leaves lies flush on the wall. It’s one of the most visually lush works in the show—yellows, reds, and ochres tangled together in a dense carpet of decay. The leaves are not photorealistic, but they flirt with realism. Their forms are fractured just enough to feel designed, composed. Immediately, it’s beautiful. On closer inspection, it becomes haunting. Why leaves? Why this moment of seasonal change in the midst of otherwise human-centered images? For me, this painting marked a shift—from looking outward to looking backward. Leaves, after all, are the residue of time passing. They are the remains of something once alive. Hammoud does not depict the tree or the fall; he gives us only the aftermath.
This painting feels like a memory. Not a specific one, but the feeling of one. It asks the viewer to slow down, to notice the textures and colors that we might otherwise walk past. Here, form and content collapse into each other—the density of the brushwork mimics the density of recollection, where details blur and tangle. The ambiguity is the point.
What holds this exhibition together, ultimately, is Hammoud’s ability to repeat without redundancy. While each painting offers a new subject—a girl, a stairwell, a pile of leaves—they all share a quiet rigor, a sense of withholding. Hammoud never overexplains; he never indulges in excess. Instead, he offers variations on a theme: observation, introspection, structure, and collapse. The final space of the gallery deepens this impression. Here, paintings of mechanical interiors—possibly factory floors, scaffolding, or storage systems—line the wall. They are intricate and hard-edged, dominated by greys and metallic tones. But nestled within these cold forms are small ruptures: a flicker of yellow, an unexpected shadow, a sliver of light. These works feel like the brain at work, trying to organize chaos into something legible. The repetition across these images is not monotonous; it’s meditative. Each painting becomes a frame in a larger film, a still from an interior documentary. And in this accumulation, the emotional resonance builds. We begin to see how the forms echo one another. How the drawing girl is like the leaf pile—contained, tangled, focused. How the stairwell mirrors the mechanical interior—structured, rigid, complex.
In the age of infinite scrolling, Hammoud’s Mise en Abyme offers a radical proposition: slowness. This exhibition doesn’t dazzle or provoke in obvious ways. It doesn’t rely on shock or irony. Instead, it insists that meaning comes from attention—from looking again, and again, and again. And that’s what makes it urgent. This kind of work is easy to overlook in a cultural landscape addicted to immediacy. But Hammoud is doing something braver: he’s creating space for reflection. His paintings operate on the edge of legibility, inviting viewers to linger, to question their own perception. They’re not just about what we see, but how we see—and what we miss when we don’t take the time.
Formally, the work is impeccable. Size compliments each painting. Hammoud’s command of color, line, and composition is clear in every piece. But technical prowess is not the point. What matters is how those formal choices serve the emotional and philosophical stakes of the work. This is painting not as decoration or narrative, but as thought—layered, recursive, open-ended. As I left the gallery, I found myself thinking about that first painting again—the girl drawing at the table. In many ways, she is the stand-in for the artist, but also for the viewer. She is absorbed, focused, unaware of being watched. And yet we watch her, trying to decipher the world through her hands.
