White Agnus Dei by Ismaël
Narcissus and Screen
luminescing one another
white on white.
Bashõ
If after Newton, we posit that white is the luminous sum of all colours, "Carré blanc sur fond blanc" (White on White) would be the painting that contains the largest number of colours. Malevich!s painting would contain them all, more than once, twice even. In addition, these two white ones cover up a third white, the white of blank canvas. German thought challenged (Goethe), nuanced (Schopenhauer) exceeded (Wittgenstein) British physicit!s Treaty and his scientific theory of light and colours. Then a Russian supremacist did the rest. If white is only a composed light, "White on white" would then be seen in the dark. But white does not exist, only blanks do. Malevich!s painting contains two whites. And the personal exhibition of Malek Gnaoui offers a variation of whites on the same theme.
"Agnus Dei" in sol minor, No. 26 of the Mass in si Minor by Bach, which has never been given office because of its extended length, more particularly, the "Agnus Dei" (perhaps because it is the only piece composed in a distant tone way off the other 26 pieces of the Mass) is a music of rare plasticity. The alto solo added to the two melody lines of the strings and of the continuo, do produce a floating musical fabric. Music is a form that is not seen; but Bach!s "Agnus Dei" raises sensations in the volumes of space as in a synesthetic experience of which he would be the sensory alchemist. Bach is the first visual composer.
"Fabrica 0464" is a music that is to be seen, made of white notes. A music that we might call "white Works on white walls in white lights." Thus, the serial composition of most works such as "BS. 99's” (referring to the 99 names of god and by extension to the 99 wooden beads, ivory or other material contained in a string) creates an immediate musicality. This musicality is accentuated by an underlying rhythm that structures the whole exhibition.
In French, blank verse is a verse without rhyme. This figure is also found in other languages like German; in English, blank verse is a rhymeless iambic pentameter. This form imperfectly appeared in a variety of poetry (recurrently used by Shakespeare and linked in France to the modern writings of late nineteenth century) still remains a rhythmic structuring, not through regular rhymes but through less visible sonorous arrangements disclosed in slidings, contaminations and reminiscences.
Thus operate the poetics of Malek Gnaoui. The overflow of semantic and conceptual assonances goes beyond the immediate works, reaching out to contaminate others. The form is substantially the same (with different dimensions) in "BS Eid II" and "BS Moving
Narcissus and Screen luminescing one another white on white. Bash!
points". The idea of ultra-monitoring is visible in the magnified display of "Fabrica BS" and "BS </ html>".
"Fabrica 0464" is like Bach!s "Agnus Dei", a floating sonorous fabric, both musical and poetic. And as in Malevich!s painting, you need to come close to distinguish the various tones. The space of the gallery is similar to a gigantic installation within which is lived and thought the novel experience of whiteness. Space becomes a milky matter where movement is a challenge to both the body and its ability to perceive. For to distinguish the whiteness of a work from the light of one of the wall amounts to perceiving the visible form hiding away at that moment from the beholder. Phenomenologically, it is a continuous process of revelation that unfolds before our eyes. These apparitions / disappearances are again marked by the curtains with transparent strips separating the different rooms of the gallery.
If the texture of the material, its reliefs and collisions, shape up the outrenoir of Soulages, it is the form of ceramics that embodies Gnaoui!s Intrablanc (intrawhite). The idea here is not to go and see beyond black, but to go and peep into white and more, as this is a total immersion process whereby all five senses are interpellated, experimenting barbarism lurking inside beauty, tasting blood flowing under the guise of civilisational progress.
The work of Malek Gnaoui focuses on the links between contemporary alienation and systems of ancestral values through a rereading of ceramics and of the sheep figure as conveyed by religion and popular beliefs. His work is the culmination of several years of plastic and political research. "Fabrica 0464" takes the form of a variation upon the same product: the Black Sheep. In an asepticised world, the black sheep, a central figure in the work of the ceramist, becomes a product of consumption frantically made into a logo, a perfume, a spectacle and so on until death ensues. The artist on the other hand, is the director of its recovery by the art market; and in fine, the director of his own death as a free artist. Far from being a coincidence, "BS. Dead meat"- as the fifth self-portrait of the artist - is for the first time a self-portrait carcass.
As a radical and sensory plunge into the depths of hypercapitalism, the exhibition closes on "BS. </ Html>". A screen displaying images from a surveillance camera placed in the last room of the gallery. The spectators see themselves behind a white veil on which "Black sheep" is inscribed in a different shade of white. Inside these three superimposed whites (the scattered light from the screen traversing the two white sheets of vinyl) stands the climax of barbarism. Inside hypercapitalist fascism lurks that which nobody wants to see: people are also no more than products manufactured and marketed by finance. Never has "white on white" been so black.
Translated by Nejet Mchela
