It all starts with a dot. "The dot is very important," says Khaled al Saai, as he reaches for a fresh sheet of paper, dips a wooden blade into a pot of ink and swiftly marks a small neat square in the centre of the white page. "This is the beginning of everything, the dot. It measures the letters geometrically. It gives identity to each letter."
More dots appear on the sheet as Saai begins working with fluency. "It refers to Kaaba, when you look from above, the dot is rectangular. When it is rounded, it is the movement around the Kaaba, the dot itself between the two stages - no movement and the ultimate movement - between the calmness and movement. Classically, each style has its own dot." The 38-year-old, Syrian-born calligrapher is well-versed in classic calligraphy styles - as his reputation attests, he is one of the few young Arab artists who have transcended regional boundaries to achieve real international fame. He has exhibited in both solo and group shows around the world, from Sharjah to Mexico and Boston to Bonn. He has been feted by major calligraphy events in Istanbul, Sharjah and Iran, as well as smaller arts festivals in Europe, often picking up first prize in biennial competitions, and beating down the cream of the region's calligraphers. Major wins over the past decade include four first prizes for Diwani Jali calligraphy at his alma mater, the prestigious in Istanbul Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture (IRCICA), as well as a glut of prizes from Sharjah Calligraphy Biennials.
It's his highly distinct style that immediately arrests the attention. It's a perfect synthesis of old and new, spiritual and earthy. In his varied canvases - some pocket-sized, others stretching across gallery walls - he diffuses traditional techniques through a contemporary prism, deconstructs strictly-executed calligraphic styles within vast landscapes. The results can reference Quranic verses, secular poetry or more simply, clusters of random letters into pictorial forms that thunder across the surfaces of his canvases.
Since his first solo show, at the Spanish Institute of Damascus in 1996, Saai's career has been firmly in the ascendant. In Homf, in central Syria, childhood amid the bosom of an artistic family imbued him with a keen awareness of Arabic arts, especially music, poetry and painting. With the encouragement of an older brother, he began making tentative forays into calligraphy at an early age. He moved to Istanbul to study under the Ustad Hussein Chelabi at IRCICA. Chelabi's reputation as a traditionalist, a stern practitioner of calligraphic forms, gave Saai a solid grounding in the discipline. Claiming inspiration from not only classic texts and images, Saai focused less on painstaking reproductions of holy texts, moving instead to express himself through a love of nature, in dramatic natural landscapes.
While he's not in the realms of the almost pure abstraction practised by other classically trained calligraphers such as Iran's Golnaz Fathi, Saai draws on a multitude of influences and inspirations for his works. While the purity of his calligraphy is retained, he uses the script in unexpected contexts to build dense landscapes and abstract forms. For Venetia Porter, the assistant keeper of Islamic and contemporary Middle Eastern art at the British Museum in London, who included Saai in her recent Word Into Art exhibition in London and Dubai, the artist represents an almost unique position, located between traditional calligraphy and fine art.
"Ustad Hussein Chalabi, with whom a great many prominent calligraphers studied, would have been very rigorous," she says. "And so, Khaled is completely imbued with that tradition. But since then he has crossed into a different sphere. He's become an art-calligrapher in addition to doing the very formal type of calligraphy. Now, he doesn't do so much religious texts that you get taught, but his pieces are more creations of groups of letters and landscapes. "
At the three galleries in Dubai currently showing his work as part of their summer collections - Dubai's Green Art Gallery, Majlis and XVA - his works are consistently popular, and interest from the mid-range art market is healthy. "Khaled's art appeals to western eyes particularly because of the recognition of the movement in his calligraphy," says the XVA boss and long-time Saai supporter Mona Hauser. "In some works, the letters are moving in a wavelike pattern. His sense of colour gives beauty in a decorative way. That also adds appeal."
It's exactly this decorative quality which draws many viewers to Saai's work. For instance, a recent first-time investor, the Jumeirah-based photographer Rebecca Hobday, summed up neatly the thoughts of many amateur collectors visiting Dubai galleries, in search of an affordable, yet unique piece of art. "We were looking for some regionally produced art as a souvenir of our time in the Middle East," she says. "We had read about Khaled al Saai, and when we saw his work, we were immediately drawn to his use of colour and the fluidity of the images. The pieces we have bought grow on me every day."
For the artist, though, the very ritualised process of calligraphy is fundamental to his practise. "Painting, calligraphy, it takes me under," he explains as he demonstrates another script. "It helps me clean my mind. It's a form of meditation, almost." He continues: "My choice of calligraphy style depends on the idea, the composition. Mainly I use the Thuluth or Diwani Jali - that is the big, bold, most decorative style. The Ottomans created it for the sultan to make his tughra, his official seal. Diwan Jali is that style. The whole message is in the script. That is what I like about this style, it is beautiful. There is the grammar, the rules how to do this decoration. It is not random, you don't just throw the work in any way. It can be very complicated, or sometimes we have an easy way. Diwani Jali is also good to make shapes with, not just for writing."
Another favourite script is Thuluth, which is also closely associated with the Ottomans, and references his training in Turkey. This script is far more brisk and efficient than Diwani Jali. Grabbing his wooden pen again, Saai rapidly sketches out a few characters in the Thuluth style. "Thuluth comes from triangle, the word actually means triangle. Look at the shape of the top part of the letter. It moves in a triangular direction."
Blending the cleaner, sharper lines of Thuluth with the opulence of Diwani Jali brings us closer to the trademark Saai style. But again, Saai's love of experimentation emerges through his choice of media. The usual ink and tempera and range of graduated wooden blades of any calligrapher is present and correct, yet there are inks made from substances like tobacco and crushed walnuts, which add extra texture and depth to his work.
"I have no direct influences," he remarks. "I know all the Iranian artists, but I don't have any Parsi style in my work. Usually, I work with a theme, I have everything I am doing translated to Arabic and try to convey the rhythm of the language in the visual art and that is a challenge." Citing favourites such as the late Lebanese painter Paul Guragossian and Syrian contemporary art legend Fateh Moudarres, Saai says he prefers to draw inspiration from his surroundings. Porter makes tentative comparisons to the Iraqi painter Hassan Massoudy, also featured in Word Into Art, but points out that Massoudy's technique uses words with a much more straightforward approach.
Saai's best pieces reflect his love of music. He recently staged a performance piece with a Jordanian musician, Khaled Jaramani, in which he responded visually to the lutist's performance by echoing the music in his strokes as he painted words from a Sufi poem by Taher Riadh. "I try to convey the rhythm of language in visual art and that is a challenge, there is a very deep dialogue between these two arts. Music complements the calligraphy."
As a driving force behind the Sharjah Museum's Calligraphy Biennial, Saai is at the forefront of developing and organising local calligraphy practise. Following a successful event earlier this year, he hopes to broaden the biennial by inviting artists to submit work along thematic lines. There are rumours of a new, regional centre for calligraphy in the UAE - at present, most practitioners are centred around Jordan and Turkey. But also, it appears that with the patronage of auction houses and consistently growing interest from abroad, Saai is among the forefront of the current renaissance of Arabic art.
"What's distinctive about him is how he uses letters in traditional, recognisable forms, but then makes them abstract," comments Porter. "Whenever I speak of him to other students of Chelabi, they always say, 'Oh, Khaled al Saai, he is amazing'. And he is, he is amazing to them because not only does he follow the rules very strictly, he has managed to go beyond. No one is doing it in quite the way he does".
Khaled al Saai's work can currently be seen at the XVA Gallery in Dubai (04 04 353 5383), the Majlis Gallery in Dubai (04 3536233) and the Green Art Gallery in Dubai (04 344 9888).