ABED AL KADIRI

Red sun. Orange sun. Sun and steel. Dots in the horizon. Bullets over Beirut. Trous de mémoires.

The sleeper in the valley awakens, stretches his hand and draws four elements: light, bird, water, and ash. They come together and break apart. They’re neat and messy and accept each other’s contradictions. It’s the work of memory shattered by a catastrophic explosion. Fragments strewn across the canvas. Particles of movement and mood swings.

The artist collects them all with no intention of making sense of them or overseeing their reconciliation. He plays a forbidden game in the sun. The result is a distilled language, a way of seeing, and a new form of storytelling that emerges from war and breakdowns and unfinished beginnings.

Red Sun. Yellow Sun. The green ray ties like a thread the chain of memory, brings bodies together, and separates them with no promise of reunion. They bond and break free, over and over, in a mechanical ballet at the edge of disaster. There is no stasis in this painting and no salvation. No shelter for light and ash and the birds after last sky of Beirut.

Press release courtesy Galerie Tanit. Text: Tarek El-Ariss, Scholar and Author of 'Water on Fire: A Memoir of War'