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Horizontal Vertical Horizontal

Utställning på Extension Art Space med Selim Ben Cheikh, nuvarande residensstipendiat på IASPIS i Stockholm.

Datum: 3 – 22 juni 2023
Vernissage: lördag 3 juni 2023
Tid: 17:00 – 21:00
Plats: Extension Art Space
Adress: Älvkarleövägen 6, Stockholm
T-bana: Ropsten, utgång Hjorthagen

Utställningen är öppen fredagar och lördagar 12.00 – 17.00 eller enligt överenskommelse: extensionartspace@gmail.com

English

Horizontal Vertical Horizontal

Exhibition at Extension Art Space with Selim Ben Cheikh, current IASPIS Artist in Residence in Stockholm.

Date: 3 – 22 June 2023
Opening: Saturday 3 June 2023
Time: 5 – 9 pm
Place: Extension Art Space
Address: Älvkarleövägen 6, Stockholm, Sweden
Subway: Ropsten, exit Hjorthagen

The exhibition is open on Fridays/Saturdays 12.00 – 17.00 or by appointment: extensionartspace@gmail.com

This is the story of the artist’s encounter with his concerns and questions.
This project started in 2020 during the prevalent concept of social distancing.
The concept of distance challenged me to take a step back creating a critical perspective on things, concepts, dogmas, fears, and obsessions. It became an intellectual process that flattened everything, allowing for a critical distance between our dogmas and fears. It was then that I explored my relationship with painting and my connection to the disappearance.
I decided to stop using brushes and work only with acrylic spray to eliminate any trace of brush or body on the canvas.

I aimed for an indirect contact between the paint and canvas, I created clouds of paint and dust that gently settled on the canvas, positioned horizontally on the floor.

The canvas became a receptacle for the vaporized dust of the paint, which reached its surface.

Time and decantation become the revealers of the painted image, like in photography, when the bath of revelation brings out a photograph. It felt magical!

The painting consisted of thousands of suspended points that combine with the canvas, forming coloured surfaces. I work to modulate and vary these surfaces by manipulating the intensity and direction of the paint sprays. of the jets of paint and their directions; this allowed me to discover different textures. My essential concern was to avoid the emergence of lines where two surfaces met, hence the boundaries were always nuanced, erased, and blurred.

My intention was to vanish any trace of my physical involvement on the canvas and any line associated with questioning painting. In fine arts school, we were always taught about the significance of lines and their expression in painting and drawing. By eliminating this characteristic and erasing the artist’s touch, I posed fundamental questions about the painting itself.

This narrative of a painting unfolds in three acts: horizontal, vertical, and horizontal…
This is the journey of a text that was not easy to write, because, for once, I am no longer the artist concerned with political or economic issues, reflecting on collective difficulties and questions.

This time, I am trying to show my concerns and thoughts on a white canvas. I project onto a flat, white surface to see them better in front!
Alberti claimed that painting is a window open to the world. I would argue that painting is a window open to our inner world.

Extension Art Space programs for 2023 is supported by Kulturrådet – Stockholms Stad – Konstfrämjandet. Thanks to IASPIS, The Swedish Arts Grants Committe`s International Programme for Visual and Applied Arts.