A cry, all of the work of Adel Abdessemed is a cry. A cry towards the cruelty of the world and the ferocity of man. A cry pushed as one stabs area, with sabers or swords – of which he has made spectacular (however very unimpressionistic) bouquets of Water Lilies (introduced at the Venice Biennale in 2015). A shrill cry like the squealing of chickens being slaughtered – these chickens he staged, like demise row inmates in flames, in a video installation that brought on a scandal (throughout his exhibition on the MAC in Lyon in 2018). A pointy cry like the double-bladed army barbed wire – with which he sculpted, particularly, his Christ and not using a cross and his armies of chickens… “An lively witness of historical past,” in accordance with his own phrases, Adel Abdessemed (born in 1971 in Constantine, Algeria) is an artist who thinks and composes “works that awaken the conscience.”
So let’s go get up our conscience at 87, rue du Temple, on the Continua gallery in Paris, where he proposes to observe the “brief torch” of life flicker, like Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Like Ulysses braving the waves and the temptations embodied by the candy track of the sirens, he appears, straight and impenetrable, at the prow of a ship in flames. Extremely allegorical, like all of the artist’s work, this Last video (2021) summons the facility of fantasy while making the narrative scheme waver: filmed in a hard and fast shot, the picture turns into haunting, in addition to the deafening sound of the flames devouring the boat that soon seems to us as the mausoleum of all the tragedies which have bloodied the Mediterranean Sea…
Additionally, far from autofiction, the 2 little women standing in front of a monumental bas-relief of burnt wood product of compacted conflict photographs: like us (standing behind them), they ponder the spectacle of destruction… Tv display? Smoke display? Funerary stele? Nevertheless, Tonight No Man Will Sleep warns us with the effigy of our troublemaker carrying on his shoulder a globe on hearth… whereas upstairs, an unlimited metallic crusher hammers the implacable race of time. Menace, omen, warning? We can't say that we were not aware of it…
Stéphanie Dulout
Jusqu’au 7 janvier
A la Galleria Continua – Paris – 87, rue du Temple, III –www.galleriacontinua.com
L’article ADEL ABDESSEMED : PAR-DELA LES FLAMMES est apparu en premier sur Galerie Joseph.
Comments