Creating this show was a way for me to understand and express myself more honestly - Ihab Ahmad
I PUT MY BRAIN ON PAUSE!, a solo exhibition by Lebanese artist Ihab Ahmad, marking a defining chapter in the artist’s evolving practice. This exhibition unveils a deeply personal body of work that embraces instinct, vulnerability, and emotional surrender.
For the first time, smiling faces populate Ihab’s canvases — symbolic portraits of human connection, joy, and the memories that have shaped his emotional landscape. These are not simply aesthetic departures, but intimate acknowledgments of the people and encounters that left a lasting imprint on the artist’s life.
Ahmad navigates this terrain through a fresh material language, working with oil on linen and spray paint to blur the boundaries between abstraction and figuration. In several pieces, he abandons technical control entirely, painting with his non-dominant left hand in a symbolic act of release and spontaneity. The result is a collection of works that feel raw, poetic, and unmistakably alive.
“Creating this show was a way for me to understand and express myself more honestly,” the artist reflects. “Each work became a vessel for emotion — a record of how others have moved through my world.”
Adding dimensionality to the experience, a series of wooden totem-like sculptures extends the surreal figures from his paintings into physical space. These sculptures serve as emotive, whimsical guardians of Ihab’s imaginative universe.
A highlight of the exhibition is the debut of a Lamborghini art intervention — a bold collaboration between Lamborghini Dubai and Firetti Contemporary. Transformed into a mobile artwork, the vehicle becomes an extension of Ihab’s painterly world, merging contemporary art with automotive design in a powerful gesture that redefines the limits of where art can live.
I PUT MY BRAIN ON PAUSE! is an invitation to feel, to reconnect, and to witness what happens when an artist chooses emotion over perfection, and instinct over intellect.
