Artist Hamza Kadiri’s First New York Solo Show Is Mighty and Captivating

Respect, you might say, forms the roots of Hamza Kadiri’s creative practice. “He has a reverence for raw, natural materials and a mastery of wood,” reflects Melanie Courbet, whose Manhattan gallery, Les Ateliers Courbet, will open his first solo show on January 12. Experimenting with rare and often hard-to-manipulate species of trees, the Moroccan artist arrives at his final forms painstakingly, following the onetime veins of sap to carve a trunk of ash or applying thin sheets of Royal Laos Ebony veneer. Intriguing, eye-catching, and at times a tad unsettling, the highly coveted results all prove it pays to go against the grain. ateliercourbet.com