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The Art of Excess: Meet the Middle Eastern Artist Creating Monumental Desert Drawings with a Mercedes G-Wagon
By Esmé Delaunay
In a remote stretch of desert where the sun gleams unforgivingly off endless sand dunes, a new star in the art world is blazing a trail—literally. Emerging Middle Eastern artist Fahad Al-Rami has stunned critics and captivated Instagram with his audacious technique of creating sprawling, intricate artworks using nothing but a top-of-the-line Mercedes G-Wagon and its tire tracks. Dubbed “tyre calligraphy” by some and “luxury land art” by others, Al-Rami’s works are as much about high-octane performance as they are about artistic expression.
Who Is Fahad Al-Rami?
Al-Rami, 31, hails from a prominent family in the Gulf, but he has always been determined to break free from tradition—by embracing excess in the most innovative way possible. After briefly dabbling in more conventional mediums (including a short-lived attempt to paint with saffron and camel milk), Al-Rami claims he had an epiphany while off-roading with friends.
“I was doing donuts in the sand,” Al-Rami recalls, adjusting his aviator sunglasses. “And suddenly, I looked back and saw the tracks I’d left behind. They weren’t just tracks—they were lines. Lines with meaning, power, and the subtle suggestion of turbocharged luxury.”
Since that moment, Al-Rami has devoted himself to mastering the art of “desert drawing,” using the G-Wagon as both his brush and his canvas. His works span miles, often requiring drone footage to be fully appreciated, and last only as long as the wind permits.
The Process
Al-Rami’s artistic process is as meticulous as it is extravagant. Before creating a piece, he spends hours sketching his designs in the sand with a diamond-encrusted stick—“a ceremonial act,” he explains. Once satisfied with the concept, he climbs into his custom gold-trimmed G-Wagon and begins the laborious task of translating his vision into reality, steering the vehicle with surgical precision over dunes and flats.
Each piece requires perfect coordination between Al-Rami and his pit crew, who monitor tire pressure, fuel levels, and the angles of his turns. “The G-Wagon isn’t just a car,” Al-Rami says. “It’s an extension of my soul. And its all-wheel drive ensures my soul doesn’t get stuck in soft sand.”
The Artworks
Al-Rami’s works are a fascinating fusion of tradition, modernity, and sheer extravagance. Some of his most notable pieces include:
• “The Endless Falcon”: A colossal rendering of a falcon in flight, symbolizing the spirit of the desert. The piece spans 4 miles and required three sets of tires to complete. Critics have called it “the most ambitious avian artwork since Audubon.”
• “Dune Mandala #7”: A hypnotic geometric design inspired by traditional Islamic patterns. Al-Rami’s crew had to refuel mid-piece, creating an accidental but aesthetically pleasing petrol spill at the center.
• “Ego Drip”: A self-portrait of Al-Rami—complete with his trademark sunglasses—rendered entirely in concentric circles of skid marks. Some interpret it as a critique of modern masculinity; others see it as a literal signature.
The Reception
Reaction to Al-Rami’s work has been predictably polarized. Art critics are divided between calling him “a visionary genius redefining land art” and dismissing his work as “the product of an overactive trust fund.”
Pierre Dubois, a curator at the Paris Museum of Contemporary Excess, praised Al-Rami’s ability to combine cultural commentary with “mechanized majesty.” “His use of the G-Wagon—a vehicle synonymous with wealth and status—as a tool of creation is a bold statement about the intersection of privilege and artistry,” Dubois said.
Others are less impressed. “It’s just expensive doodling in sand,” said Dr. Harriet Grimshaw, an expert in land art, who argues that Al-Rami’s works lack the environmental awareness of figures like Andy Goldsworthy. “At least Goldsworthy didn’t require premium unleaded to make his art.”
The Symbolism of the G-Wagon
To Al-Rami, the Mercedes G-Wagon is more than just a luxury SUV—it’s a symbol of modernity, power, and, above all, contradiction. “The G-Wagon is a paradox,” he explains. “It is rugged yet refined, functional yet absurdly impractical for city driving. Much like my art, it forces people to question their relationship with excess.”
Mercedes-Benz, meanwhile, has taken notice. Rumors are swirling that the automaker plans to sponsor Al-Rami’s next piece, tentatively titled “The Spiral of Speed,” which will involve three synchronized G-Wagons creating interlocking patterns across a salt flat in Saudi Arabia.
What’s Next for Al-Rami?
Al-Rami has ambitious plans for the future, including a “global desert exhibition” that will feature works in the Mojave, the Outback, and the Namib. When asked how he feels about the impermanence of his art, Al-Rami is philosophical: “All art fades. Mine just fades faster because of wind.”
Despite his critics, Al-Rami’s work continues to inspire conversation—and no small amount of envy. Whether you see him as a trailblazing artist or simply a man with too much horsepower and time on his hands, one thing is clear: Fahad Al-Rami is driving the art world in a bold new direction.
And if you can’t keep up? Well, as the artist himself might say, “That’s what four-wheel drive is for.”
Podcast Show Notes for Episode 69 of Art World Exposed
Title: “Nice, but Is It Art?”
Brace yourselves, aesthetes and iconoclasts—Episode 69 of Art World Exposed is here, dripping with intellectual pretense and borderline absurdity. This week, Saldo Caluthe and Tomas Sinke revel in their most “critical” episode yet. Expect reviews of London’s hottest exhibitions, existential debates about art’s purpose, and an interview with an artist who may or may not live in a Damien Hirst vitrine.
00:00 – 04:12 | Intro: “Because the World Needs Us”
Saldo and Tomas kick things off with their signature brand of irony, lamenting that their “vital” voices aren’t being amplified enough in the cultural landscape. Topics include their disappointment with the Tate’s coffee bar (Saldo: “Is unicorn milk too much to ask?”) and an inexplicable digression into Tomas’s recent enlightenment via a Kusama Infinity Room (“It’s like staring into my own genius”).
04:13 – 16:45 | London Exhibitions: What We Love (and Loathe)
1. “Takashi Murakami: Japanese Art History à la Takashi Murakami” at Gagosian Grosvenor Hill
Tomas declares this “a shameless act of ego” but follows up by admitting he bought a Murakami plush on the way out. Saldo insists it’s “Kawaii capitalism at its finest” and wonders aloud if Murakami can turn his grocery list into a $1M screenprint.
• Rating: 4/5 ironic winks.
2. “Brasil! Brasil! The Birth of Modernism” at the Royal Academy of Arts
Saldo waxes lyrical about the “vivid collision of colors and cultures” while Tomas smugly informs listeners he’s “already seen the original Oswald de Andrade manuscripts in São Paulo.” A deep dive into the politics of tropical surrealism ensues, complete with the phrase “neo-colonial guilt.”
• Rating: 5/5 guilty sighs.
3. “Jim Dine: Tools and Dreams” at Cristea Roberts Gallery
Saldo dismisses Dine’s “insipid obsession” with tools as “mid-century dad-core,” while Tomas defends the work as “a poignant study of human utility in decline.” Expect a petty argument over which of them actually knows what a spanner does.
• Rating: 2/5 begrudging nods.
16:46 – 28:30 | Interview: “The Artist Who Pickled Himself”
Saldo and Tomas sit down with avant-garde sensation Victor Kossuth, whose latest show at an unnamed East London warehouse involves him living inside a Damien Hirst-inspired formaldehyde tank for a week. Victor discusses his “journey into self-preservation as a critique of environmental decay,” while Tomas accuses him of being “performance art’s answer to stunt YouTubers.” Saldo interrupts to ask Victor if the tank smells.
• Key Quote: “Am I dead or alive? That’s what I’m asking you, and that’s what I’m asking myself.”
• Don’t Miss: Tomas wondering aloud if pickling himself would finally win him a Turner Prize.
28:31 – 41:02 | Discussion: “Is AI Killing the Painter?”
Saldo and Tomas take on the controversial question of whether AI-generated art is “the death of human creativity or the birth of infinite mediocrity.” They analyze a recent exhibition of AI works at a Shoreditch pop-up, leading Tomas to denounce the tech as “Dada for dilettantes.” Saldo, ever the contrarian, argues that “at least it’s cheaper than Tracey Emin.” The segment devolves into a heated debate about whether an AI could ever “understand” Duchamp’s urinal.
41:03 – 50:25 | Listener Questions: “Ask the Arbiters of Taste”
This week’s carefully curated queries include:
• “Should I invest in a Warhol print or a Rothko fridge magnet?”
• “What’s the etiquette for fake-laughing at bad performance art?”
• “How do I respond when someone asks what my art ‘means’?”
Saldo’s advice is predictably scathing, while Tomas goes full Zen by suggesting all art should “mean nothing and everything simultaneously.”
50:26 – 57:40 | Review: “The Show That Left Us Speechless (Literally)”
Saldo and Tomas review “Silence”, an experimental sound art exhibition at the Barbican. Featuring an entirely silent room, the show is described as “a bold rejection of sensory capitalism” by Saldo and “proof the curator forgot to plug in the speakers” by Tomas. Expect ruminations on John Cage, performative listening, and the ethics of snoring in a gallery.
• Rating: 3.5/5 awkward coughs.
57:41 – 1:03:30 | Closing Rant: “Who Actually Owns Culture?”
In their final tirade, Saldo and Tomas question the ownership of culture in a world of billionaire art collectors and Instagram aesthetics. Tomas quotes Walter Benjamin extensively, while Saldo throws in a reference to Dua Lipa’s latest album. The conclusion? “No one owns culture, except maybe Larry Gagosian.”
Extras:
• Links to all exhibitions discussed (because we know you don’t trust us).
• A Spotify playlist inspired by the podcast (Sad Songs to Look at Art To).
• Discount codes for Victor Kossuth’s new merchandise line (“Pickle Me Victor” t-shirts now available in acid green!).
Subscribe, Share, and Pretend to Care!
Find us on Instagram where Saldo shares blurry photos of wine-stained catalogues, and Tomas posts cryptic captions about “late-stage curation.” Leave a review if you feel brave enough—or better yet, send us a performance art video about your feelings.
Regent’s Street digital painting by Hedge Fund
Hedge Fund’s digital painting of Regent Street emerges as a bold reconfiguration of urban iconography, blending sharp contours with chromatic discord to confront the viewer with a distilled essence of modernity. The work echoes the socio-aesthetic critiques of the Pop Art movement, particularly in its Warholian flattening of depth and its unapologetic use of color as a declarative rather than descriptive device.
Foregrounded by the figure of a woman mid-gesture, the composition speaks to the alienation and fleeting connections emblematic of metropolitan life. Hedge Fund’s treatment of her form—outlined in stark, almost aggressive black—is a nod to the Neo-Expressionist embrace of emotional immediacy. The surrounding figures, rendered with less intensity, function as passive actors in this theatrical tableau of the mundane. The choice to situate these figures against the commercial backdrop of Regent Street—a site saturated with the histories of consumerism and architectural grandeur—imbues the work with an underlying tension.
In many ways, the artist evokes Walter Benjamin’s musings in The Arcades Project: “Cities are the realized dreams of modernity, but also its battlegrounds.” Hedge Fund captures this duality through a collision of geometric precision and an irreverent disregard for photorealistic fidelity. The palette—subdued yet punctuated by the acidic yellow of the woman’s hair—heightens the sense of dissonance, evoking a subdued palette similar to Edward Ruscha’s explorations of Americana, though transposed into a European context.
What sets this digital painting apart is its simultaneous embrace and critique of the digital medium. The hyper-saturation and precision feel deeply rooted in the algorithmic logic of digital creation, while the human subjects retain a rawness and individuality that resists technological homogenization. Hedge Fund‘s work thus becomes a dialogic site where the past and future of art wrestle for dominance.
Ultimately, Hedge Fund‘s Regent Street is a resonant meditation on temporality and space. It does not invite the viewer to linger in beauty but rather compels them to interrogate their role as both participant and observer in the constructed spectacle of urban life. As the late John Berger might have remarked, “The way we see things is affected by what we know.” Here, Hedge Fund challenges us to confront not only what we know of Regent Street but also what we might prefer to ignore.
St Paul’s Cathedral Triptych
King’s St Paul’s Cathedral Triptych is a masterful digital homage to the architectural grandeur and enduring cultural symbolism of Sir Christopher Wren’s 17th-century masterpiece. By distilling the cathedral’s baroque splendour into a modern, minimalist aesthetic, King juxtaposes the weight of history with the levity of contemporary visual language. The triptych format itself nods to the religious origins of such compositions, invoking Renaissance altarpieces while reimagining them through the lens of digital artistry.
The choice of color blocks—vivid red, stark white, and contemplative blue—offers a bold chromatic narrative. The red panel pulsates with vitality, evoking the fire of renewal that defined the cathedral’s construction after the Great Fire of London in 1666. It recalls T. S. Eliot’s poetic meditation on destruction and rebirth in The Four Quartets: “A condition of complete simplicity / (Costing not less than everything).” The blue, conversely, conveys tranquility and eternity, qualities often ascribed to the divine. The white, anchoring the center, serves as a neutral fulcrum, representing purity, balance, and the unadorned truth of form.
The loose, gestural lines of King’s rendering strip St Paul’s of its ornamental details, highlighting its essential structure. This approach aligns with the modernist dictum of “less is more,” famously championed by architect Mies van der Rohe, but it also harkens back to Wren’s own belief in the harmonious relationship between geometry and divinity. The triptych’s repetition emphasizes the cathedral’s universality while subtly questioning the ways it is consumed—both as a sacred site and as an emblem of London’s identity.
This work reverberates with a dialogue between the past and the present, embodying what John Ruskin once wrote: “Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts: the book of their deeds, the book of their words, and the book of their art.” In this triptych, St Paul’s Cathedral transcends time, becoming both icon and idea, as monumental as it is mutable.
On the Art of Spending Lavishly
By Compton Greene
It has long been my contention that the true measure of a person is not how they make their money, but how gloriously, extravagantly, and unapologetically they lose it. For what is life, if not a grand stage upon which we are tasked to perform a role that dazzles and distracts? And is not spending lavishly—with flourish and flair—the most captivating performance of all? As Erasmus so aptly wrote, “Pecunia non olet” (money does not stink), though I dare add: it does, however, lose all meaning if spent without style.
To spend lavishly is not merely a vulgar act of overconsumption—it is an art form, requiring vision, discernment, and an unerring ability to imbue even the most mundane purchase with a sense of the sublime. One does not merely purchase a thing; one transforms it into a declaration of self, a monument to taste, and a hymn to one’s own ability to live life as it should be lived: extravagantly.
The Philosophy of Lavishness
Lavish spending is not for the faint of heart or the small of mind. It requires a certain intellectual rigor, an aesthetic sensibility that borders on the spiritual. As Aristotle might have said, had he possessed a decent tailor, “Excess is not merely excess; it is the perfection of form when liberated from utility.”
Consider, if you will, the infamous example of the great 17th-century Swedish king, Gustavus Adolphus, who once commissioned a ship so outrageously top-heavy with gilded carvings that it sank before leaving the harbor. What a triumph of vision! What a glorious failure! Gustavus understood what so few do today: that greatness lies not in the result but in the audacity of the attempt.
Thus, let us reject the dreary philosophy of moderation. Let the stingy insist on “value for money” and prattle on about practicality. We, the true aesthetes, know that to spend lavishly is to transcend the banal and enter the realm of the poetic.
Why Spend Lavishly? Three Irrefutable Arguments
1. Lavish Spending Is a Statement of Individuality
In an age where everyone is content to order mass-produced trinkets and dress like mannequins in some dystopian department store, the act of spending lavishly is an act of rebellion. To commission a bespoke item—be it a tailored suit, a rare painting, or a bathtub carved from a single block of Carrara marble—is to proclaim, “I am not like you. I am better.”
The poet Lord Byron, himself a connoisseur of the finer things in life, once declared, “There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture on the lonely shore,” but I daresay Byron never truly knew rapture until he spent an entire year’s income on a silver tea service he used precisely twice. Such gestures are not mere purchases; they are acts of self-definition.
2. Lavish Spending Elevates the Ordinary to the Extraordinary
Why drink wine when you can drink wine aged in barrels once owned by Napoleon? Why light your home with mere bulbs when Venetian glass chandeliers exist? To spend lavishly is to assert that life’s daily rituals—eating, drinking, sitting—deserve to be enshrined in beauty. As the French painter Jean-Antoine Watteau so beautifully illustrated in his fêtes galantes, even a picnic can become an affair of grace and grandeur if only one adds silk cushions and champagne.
3. Lavish Spending Is a Legacy
When one spends lavishly, one is not merely acquiring objects; one is constructing a legacy. It is no accident that the most enduring names in history—Lorenzo de Medici, Louis XIV, and Catherine the Great—are remembered as much for their spending as for their achievements. What are we, after all, if not the artifacts we leave behind?
When future generations rifle through our belongings, let them marvel not at our practicality but at our splendor. Let them gasp at the absurdity of a jewel-encrusted lobster fork or a library filled with books too fine to touch. Let them say, “Here lived a person who understood the value of beauty above all else.”
The Technique of Lavishness
Of course, one must spend lavishly with precision. Careless extravagance is no better than miserliness; to be gaudy is as sinful as to be dull. A true master of lavishness follows these principles:
• Always Choose the Unnecessary Over the Practical: A gold-plated umbrella stand is infinitely preferable to a sturdy plastic one. Why? Because it makes people ask, “Who on earth buys this?” And to that question, you may simply smile.
• Never Explain Your Spending: To justify a lavish purchase is to cheapen it. Let others assume you have secrets they’ll never understand.
• Spend on the Experience, Not Just the Item: A lavish purchase should tell a story. A tablecloth handwoven by monks on a Greek island is not just a tablecloth—it is a conversation starter, a slice of mystique, and possibly a veil for an unanticipated wedding.
In Praise of Pointless Luxuries
Finally, I urge you to embrace the pointless luxury, the item that serves no function other than to delight and bewilder. Proust spent entire afternoons admiring a single porcelain vase. Marie Antoinette kept sheep dressed in ribbons. Michelangelo once purchased marble he had no intention of carving, simply because it was “too beautiful to touch.”
To spend lavishly on the unnecessary is to assert that life is not a series of problems to be solved but a canvas to be adorned.
Conclusion: Spend Lavishly, Live Immortally
I leave you with the words of Horace: “Pulvis et umbra sumus” (we are but dust and shadows). Yet, in the fleeting moments before we return to that dust, we have the power to make ourselves glitter, to shine, to stand apart from the gray masses. To spend lavishly is not merely to purchase—it is to ascend.
So go forth, dear reader, and spend as if the world depends on it. Because, truly, it does.