A cry, the entire work of Adel Abdessemed is nothing but a cry. A cry against the cruelty of the world and the ferocity of man. A cry uttered as if stabbing space itself, with sabers or swords – from which he has created impressive (but hardly impressionistic) bouquets of Waterlilies (presented at the Venice Biennale in 2015). A shrill cry like the squawking of slaughtered chickens—the very chickens he staged, like condemned men engulfed in flames, in a scandalous video installation (during his exhibition at the MAC in Lyon in 2018). A cry as sharp as double-bladed military barbed wire—with which he sculpted, notably, his Christs without crosses and his armies of chickens… “An active witness to history,” in his own words, Adel Abdessemed (born in 1971 in Constantine, Algeria) is an artist who thinks and creates “works that awaken conscience.”
Let us then awaken our conscience at 87 rue du Temple, at the Galleria Continua in Paris, where he invites us to watch the flickering "short torch" of life, like Shakespeare's Macbeth. Like Ulysses braving the waves and the temptations embodied by the sirens' sweet song, he appears, upright and impenetrable, at the prow of a burning ship. Highly allegorical, like all the artist's work, this Latest video (2021) summons the power of myth while unsettling the narrative structure: filmed in a fixed shot, the image becomes haunting, as does the deafening sound of flames devouring the boat which soon appears to us as the mausoleum of all the tragedies that have bloodied the Mediterranean Sea…
Far from autofiction, the two little girls stand before a monumental bas-relief of charred wood made from compressed images of war: like us (standing behind them), they contemplate the spectacle of destruction… Television screen? Smoke screen? Funeral stele? We are trapped by our own curiosity… However, Tonight No Man Will Sleep [Tonight Nobody Will Sleep]"As our troublemaker, carrying a burning globe on his shoulder, warns us… while upstairs, an enormous metal crusher hammers away at the relentless march of time. Threat, omen, warning? We can't say we weren't warned…"
“Out, Out, Brief Candle” — Galleria Continua
87, rue du Temple, Paris 3e
Until January 7, 2023
Stéphanie Dulout
