ART-PRESENTATION: Driss Ouadahi-Breach in the Silence
Born in Casablanca, of Algeria parents in exile, he left Morocco at the age of four, lived in Kabilyia until his thirteenth’s birthday, and subsequently went to Algiers and studied fine arts. After turning twenty-seven, Ouadahi left Algeria to continue his art studies in Paris. He eventually attended the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, Germany, where he has now lived and worked for more than twenty years.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Hosfelt Gallery Archive
In his solo exhibition “Breach in the Silence” at Hosfelt Gallery in San Francisco, Driss Ouadahi presents new paintings, largely renderings of chain-link fences that were influenced by the artist’s interactions with Syrian and Iraqi refugees who have re-settled in Germany. Fencing is a very real impediment to the movement of the millions of people currently fleeing war and violence or seeking a better life. The fence is a dehumanizing symbol of “otherness”, a metaphor for alienation, -as ugly a signifier as it is an object. Ouadahi’s depictions of the fence are meticulous. Delicately-rendered, woven-steel wire is drawn against the sky, simultaneously seductive and ominous. The fences sometimes stretch taught across the picture plane as an unbroken barrier, but more often are slashed open like a gaping wound or have the regularity of their grids bent out-of-shape, evidence that someone has torn through or scrambled up and over. Driss Ouadahi started with abstract colour field paintings consisting of monochrome surfaces that push into each other and overlap, yet he progressively turned to more realistic compositions. Still, it is a turn to the symbols of architecture and the urban that links all his paintings together. He paints subjects that could a priori be considered “a-picturesque”. In his work we find shells of buildings on the periphery of Algiers and Paris, typical dwellings that once brought forth pride as symbols of modernity and progress. They are now looked upon with disdain and shame and are considered utter architectural and social failures.
Info: Hosfelt Gallery, 260 Utah Street, San Francisco, Duration: 16/7-20/8/16, days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sat 10:00-17:30, Thu 11:00-19:00, http://hosfeltgallery.com
