Mounir Fatmi — They were blind, they only saw images — Yvon Lambert Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: January 30 → February 28, 2014

Mounir Fatmi — Galerie Yvon Lambert Très remarqué lors de la Biennale de Venise en 2011, à l’occasion de sa participation à la première exposition pan-arabe « The Futu... 3 - Bravo Critique

Yvon Lambert presents They were blind, they only saw images, the first exhibition of Mounir Fatmi. For this occasion, the Moroccan artist presents a series of new works questioning through identity and controversy the paradoxes of representations of the Sacred. By media, as installation, video, prints or performance, mounir fatmi continues his exploration of different types of language from mystical texts of Sufism, essays of Spinoza or the controversial writings of Salman Rushdie.

Mounir Fatmi makes visible to the spectator the paradoxical aspect of our understanding of images. With this exhibition, he invites us to take part in sensory journey, going over the simple act of seeing, in a place where the dialog between the physical and metaphysical can take place.

The exhibition starts with the projection of the video Sleep Al Naim devoted to Salman Rushdie; formal reference to the experimental film realized in 1963 by Andy Warhol representing the poet John Giorno while he is sleeping. Not able to directly meet the British writer, mounir fatmi uses for this video the new technologies of image to create the presence of Rushdie in a contradictory status, suspended in a kind of physical abandonment between vulnerability and quiet force.

Who is Joseph Anton ?, is a work also inspired by Rushdie which shows us the interest of Mounir Fatmi regarding composite drawings. For this work, ink jet printed on mirror, he uses as a pretext Rushdie’s pseudonym — Joseph Anton — composed with the names of writers Joseph Conrad and Anton Chechkov. By building a unique portrait from faces of the three writers, mounir fatmi creates for the spectator the visual experience of a new identity, the one of a fugitive.

La Divine Illusion, created with the same ink jet technique, superimposes study drawings from the Rorschach test over pages from religious books. With this series of works, Mounir Fatmi seeks to interrogate the spectator about the idea of absolute truth usually granted to religious text.