December 2016 I March 2017
\nLa Bo\u00eete I Un lieu d\u2019art contemporain<\/p>\n
Revelation, revelability: it was always a matter of light. A manifestation through light and in light. This – a secret, a mystery, a hidden meaning – reaches the light of day or of the laboratory, and offers itself to shared custody. But then, at the very moment when it is offered up to general vision, the light that showed it becomes invisible, withdraws, by deception or out of respect, so that the contours of the manifestation can take shape.
\nFakhri El Ghezal’s photographs are perhaps simply an attempt to show this revealing light itself. They point towards the very process of revelation. And therefore towards the invisibility behind all visibility. Revealed traces of the revelation itself, in the violence of its appearance.
\nViolence? The wounds necessary to any exposure of an inside as well as an outside. The light gathered here by the photographer falls like a thunderbolt on the soul and the landscapes, tearing them from their latency. The tranquillity of the landscapes and moments captured is disturbed by the vibration of an almost intrusive light, which only manages to show, the better to hide what is to be seen.
\nLook at how the grain in Fakhri El Ghezal’s works (or visions) sows light and darkness at the same time. It is as if photography is not based on a captured moment, nor does it reflect a definite state, but rather shows itself through a never-ending interplay between luminous intrusion and discreet obscurity. An auto-bio-photography inscribed by a combination of a desire for exhibition (of oneself and one’s world) on the one hand, and a withdrawal or retreat on the other. Between speech and silence: Fakhri El Ghezal’s photographs speak through their silence.
\nBlack is not the only concealer. Excess light hides too. This is quickly apparent in the photographic sequences. When overexposed, contours dissipate, and the light burns away the receptacle in which it was meant to settle. Light, like spirit and as spirit, carries within it this fundamental ambiguity: it can annihilate what it gives life to, it can obscure what it manifests. Violence of the light? Violence of the spirit?
\nWhat if we thought of memory as a photographic revelation? What if every memory should be revealed as a photograph? With this eternal hesitation between manifestation and obscuration? What would an over-exposed memory be like? A memory framed and reframed? Fakhri El Ghezal’s work certainly suggests this. Memory, revealed to oneself and to others, cannot appear without suffering all that the image suffers in its appearance in the light.<\/p>\n
“I was a prisoner in your skull”: a song title that reflects both memory and photography. Like an event of light trapped both in the mind and in the camera body (the film). So many wounds and burns, so many traces that show and hide. Displayed and kept. Given to the eye in a play of light that shows only to preserve. A memory that sings between silences and cries. A poem of light.<\/p>\n
Arafat Saadallah, 2016<\/p>\n
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“Fakhri El Ghezal (1981), photographe \u00e0 l\u2019origine d\u2019images sibyllines, cultivant \u00e0 dessein \u00ab l\u2019inqui\u00e9tante \u00e9tranget\u00e9 \u00bb, le Unheimlich, opte pour ce type d\u2019accueil, sans euphorie a priori. \u00ab Es ist so \u00bb, \u00ab c\u2019est ainsi \u00bb, comme le relevait Hegel, il convient donc de faire avec la ph\u00e9nom\u00e9nologie du r\u00e9el, quelque forme qu\u2019elle prenne. El Ghezal, pour La Bo\u00eete, d\u00e9veloppe l\u2019\u0153uvre s\u00e9rielle I-Was-A-Prisoner-In-Your-Skull
\n(\u00ab J\u2019\u00e9tais un prisonnier dans ton cerveau \u00bb), l\u2019\u00e9quivalent d\u2019un r\u00e9cit biographique \u00e0 \u00e9pisodes. Cet ensemble de photos N & B ou couleurs, autant de S\u00e9quences, selon les termes m\u00eames de l\u2019artiste, est un parcours de vie. S\u00e9quence A#1 : la vue d\u2019un paysage d\u2019arbre sous le ciel le long d\u2019une route, effet n\u00e9buleux et cr\u00e9pusculaire. S\u00e9quence A#4 : la vue d\u2019une route qui s\u2019enfonce dans le brouillard. S\u00e9quence A#8 : la vue de la partie haute d\u2019un minaret se d\u00e9tachant sur un ciel lavasse. S\u00e9quence B#2 : la vue de chaises align\u00e9es par rang\u00e9es, comme pour un
\nspectacle, devant une maison, mais recouvertes de housses, non appel\u00e9s \u00e0 servir dans l\u2019imm\u00e9diat. S\u00e9quence D#1 : la vue du bras nu et tendu de l\u2019artiste, de fa\u00e7on vraisemblable, qui s\u2019est photographi\u00e9 lui-m\u00eame, sans rien autour. S\u00e9quence D#4 : la vue d\u2019une route vide qui s\u2019enfonce dans un paysage arbor\u00e9, au cr\u00e9puscule\u2026 S\u00e9quence E#1 : de nouveau la vue du bras de l\u2019artiste, mais cadr\u00e9 d\u2019une fa\u00e7on diff\u00e9rente\u2026 Chaque \u00abs\u00e9quence\u00bb, une image photographique toujours sobre, est ici un moment de pr\u00e9sence \u00e0 l\u2019ordre des choses, une coupe dans le temps personnel. Le critique d\u2019art et\u00a0commissaire d\u2019exposition Arafat Sadallah, avec justesse, parle d\u2019\u00ab auto-photo-biographie \u00bb. Les images-traces de Fakhri El Ghezal sont des indices, le signe d\u2019une pr\u00e9sence, une succession d\u2019\u00e9pisodes existentiels dont l\u2019historicit\u00e9 est ind\u00e9niable, \u00e9prouv\u00e9e, ressentie, rien d\u2019extraordinaire ne se passerait-il.”<\/p>\n
Paul Ardenne<\/p>\n
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