Rédaction Africa Links 24 with Siham Jadraoui
Published on 2024-04-05 10:54:12
One of the pioneers of modern Moroccan art, the artist-painter Abdallah El Hariri, unveils his new exhibition at the Comptoir des Mines Gallery in Marrakech, where he presents works combining new research alongside the artist’s iconic periods.
He is one of the first to have adopted calligraphy as a mode of expression. His canvases whisper signs, symbols, and colors. This is the artist-painter Abdallah El Hariri, a former laureate of the School of Fine Arts in Casablanca, who is preparing to hang his works on the walls of the Comptoir des Mines gallery in Marrakech. Starting from May 11, he reveals an individual exhibition combining new research alongside the artist’s iconic periods.
“A student at the School of Fine Arts in Casablanca from 1966 to 1969 under the teachings of illustrious figures of modern painting including Mohamed Melehi, Mohamed Chabâa, Jacques Azéma, Naima El Khatib-Boujibar, Abdallah El Hariri acquires a vision that makes him a leading figure in Moroccan art by exhibiting on four continents. His vision of pictorial work is a quest for a pure state where the stain, the line, or the line delimit the tracings of the fundamentals of painting, in a work in perpetual movement,” reads in the exhibition catalog. It must be said that the artist has a strong relationship with the Arabic letter and is faithful to the art of calligraphy.
“Although visible materiality, painting tirelessly appropriates the spirituality of speech and reinvents its content and dimension. It continues to stage the breath that underlies it, tending to deconstruct the traditional dichotomy of voice and trace,” writes art critic Farid Zahi about his work.
For the record, in 1973 Abdellah El Hariri enrolled at the European Institute of Architecture and Design in Rome and in 1980 he did an engraving internship in Lodz, Poland. His first solo exhibition took place in 1973 in Casablanca. He actively participated in multiple events organized by AMAP since its creation. A graphic artist by training, Abdallah El Hariri composes in a first period paintings where geometric forms of Islamic art predominate and from which the letter “A” emerges.
Gradually, the letters enrich themselves and take a freedom of movement by detaching from the architectural composition where the polygon forms the main framework that lets escape the sign of a decisive gesture. He abandons calligraphy to focus on the technique of burnt surfaces (plastic materials, linoleum..) which reveal, after inflammation with a blowtorch, a pigmentation, shades, a complex mineral texture that brings them closer to a bare and rocky ground. It is a mutation of matter by fire. On these treated surfaces, sketched forms are inscribed, a gradation of more or less dark masses, and a whole migration of Arabic alphabet letters. The letter becomes an animated sign of plastic value, the tracing of a gesture animating the pictorial space.
Read the original article(French) on Aujourdhui.ma
