Ever since his lithographs in the early sixties there has been in Saleh AI Jumaie's work an inevitable obscurity with all those dark depths where unknowable figures sit in unknowable spaces, like figures on the borders of fearful dreams. In his paintings similarly, there seems often to be a throwback either to a historical past or an old dream, as if one were caught by some hands stretched out of a mysterious past or a faraway errant emotion. In his abstracts this tendency is noticeable in all those forms reminiscent of the archeological discoveries of Sumer and Babylon.

If his colors brighten up, they never do so to the point of absolute clarity, as his imagination prefers riddles, in which contemporary love is associated with the passions of ancient gods... His rough, almost confused texture, with the addition often of metal gashes and protuberances, is an integral part of this style.

Some of his canvases, like very old walls, carry symbols of the passage of days and desires and oblivion. Some are like talismans prepared by magicians to repel, or invite, madness.

"An Old letter" is one such talisman. For these closely jammed squiggles, arranged in unsteady lines and interpolated with 'Curse' and 'Promise' (in Arabic), are all in fact parts of fiery words rehearsed by the two figures reclining at the bottom of the picture .The man has tom his chest wide open to emphasize that "I should love to open my chest for you to enter it or for me to enter yours..."

The man is presumably the painter, but his is also Enkidu, Tammuz, the man of thousands of years ago. Similarly, he is today's lover, whose body has been wounded all over by words.

Saleh AI-Jumaie will be exhibiting his artworks at the Sultan Gallery. The artworks being exhibited in ''That Night" are paintings on aluminum. His wG>rk in printing as a film assembler since 1961 gave him the inspiration to use aluminum sheets in his painting to form as reliefs In his artwork.

Mr. AI Jumaie is a prominent artist of our times. He has exhibited five times at the Sultan gallery in the years 1970, 1974, 1977, 1987 and 1989 and is showing once again after a gap of 40 years.