Oriental Accident

Lombard Freid Projects

March 9 – April 14, 2012

Curator: mounir fatmi

 

You can find the catalog at this link:

www.amazon.com/dp/B08RF26KT4

 

Lombard Freid Projects is pleased to present Oriental Accident, Mounir Fatmi’s second solo show with the gallery. The exhibition features a collection of works never before shown in the United States made between 2009-2012. As always with Fatmi’s work, the art is political in nature and confronts issues in the contemporary Arab world. The native Moroccan, who lives and works in Paris, uses installation, sculpture and video to explore modern day industrialization, recent insurgencies throughout the Maghreb and the Middle East, and the inevitability of history repeating itself.

Oriental Accident, the piece for which the show is named and the center point for the exhibition, speaks to violent tension between tradition and youth in the contemporary Arab world. Recordings gathered from the demonstration in Maghreb during the Arab Spring play from speakers embedded into ornate Persian rug. Fatmi references the momentous rebellion again in The Year Zero, bas-relief that forms the number zero within an arrangement of coaxial antenna cables and cable pins. The empty space within the cable work is what gives the pieces its weight, just as the word zero gave numeric meaning to nothingness. Fatmi is referring to the infinite nothingness of a new beginning.

Within the severe presence of Fatmi’s politics, the works are sprinkled with references to art history, film and literature. This conceptual dichotomy is also apparent in the visuals of the exhibition. Delicate lace is vandalized with black paint in Oil Oil Oil Oil and the white on white bas-reliefs are both muted and energetic. Traditional Arabic calligraphy is recontextualized in the videos works Mixology and Modern times, a History of the Machine, the calligraphy morphs to become graceful patterns, contrasting with the backdrop against which the artist is showing them.

Modern times, a black and white projection that dominates the gallery walls plays homage to the early kenotic art of Duchamp, and the iconic Charlie Chaplin film ‘Modern Times’. Rotoreliefs-esque circles create dizzying visual effects as they spin on the wall forming a hypnotic abstracted machine. Excerpts from the Qur’an draw the viewer in to question its meaningful ideals and radical real world counterparts.

Circular imagery visual links all the works and stands in as a symbol for our cyclically violent past. This topical exhibition acts as a key for the events that have changed our perception of the world, particularly the Arab world, over the last 10 years.

 

Lombard Freid Projects, March 2012