Exhibitions >Alternative Spaces >
Faisal Samra

Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris, on a proposal of Marc Pottier, 2009

I met Faisal Samra in the 80s when he spent some years in Paris coming from Manama. At this time he was working using the traditional culture of his origins: suspended and moving canvases of abstract paintings, hung from bamboo, done with his sensation and emotion, nourished with the spirit of Dada and Marcel Duchamp. This is how he was feeding a work explaining his homage to the Silk Road with the occidental perception of what painting, collage, installation… were about.

Then I lost contact with his work until his 2007 exhibition at The Khalid Shoman Foundation in Amman. This has been a wonderful surprise for me: videos, digital images and photography, many new materials he uses now, confronting us with an improvised cycle on the theme of construction and destruction, considering the creative act by itself remembering us Jackson Pollock’s revolution or Helio Oiticica’s brazilian performances. His purpose is questioning why does an artist have to create new images in our saturated world and maybe in each of our own over knowledgeable life.

Marc Pottier
Paris, May 2008