Vortex in Barcelona: From a KAUST Breezeway to a Gallery Wall in Spain

There is a covered walkway at KAUST that connects the parking lot to the main university campus. Most people walk through it without looking up. Bold repeating stripes line the walls and ceiling, converging on a vanishing point ahead, and if you stop in the middle of it, the geometry does something extraordinary. It consumes you. The stripes close in from every direction and the person walking through becomes part of the pattern.

That photograph is called Vortex.

In March 2026, Vortex was selected for the GuruShots Best of Black and White exhibition at Valid World Hall in Barcelona, Spain. The exhibition opened on 27 March and ran through 29 March. Valid World Hall is one of Barcelona's established exhibition spaces, and Best of Black and White is one of GuruShots' most competitive selections.

From a breezeway in the Saudi Arabian desert to an international gallery wall in Spain. That arc is exactly what the STRIPE series is about. The extraordinary hiding inside the ordinary. The background moment that turns out to be the whole point.

Vortex is part of STRIPE: Urban Minimal Geometric, available on Amazon.

This book is an independent artistic project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).