Untitled 13

The formal structure of the work is built on a pronounced vertical rhythm, in
which human masses stand side by side within dense chromatic fields. The
painting thus appears closer to a sequence of visual segments than to a single,
unified scene. The vertical lines – through the flow of color and the elongation
of bodies – impose a sense of weight and enforced standing, lending the
composition a monumental, almost memorial quality, as if the figures were
human markers rather than living bodies. There is no horizon and no
perspectival depth; the surface itself becomes the field of confrontation.
Color plays an emotional rather than a descriptive role. Warm hues dominate
zones of tension, while cooler tones infiltrate the surface like unsettling
psychological layers. Color does not stabilize form but undermines it; it seeps
and erodes, as though the body were formed from color only to collapse back
into it. This disintegration reinforces a state of uncertainty and prevents the
image from reaching completion.
The figures are drawn with a strained, nervous line; their features are effaced,
their bodies elongated and semi-transparent. This strips them of individuality
and transforms them into generalized human conditions. There is no heroism
here, only a collective stance within a zone of trial.
Arabic calligraphy appears as an autonomous plastic mass, held in a tense
relationship with the body. It neither explains nor decorates; rather, it observes
and exerts pressure, creating a distance between the readable and the visible.
The letter functions as a visual conscience, reminding us that language – like
morality – is capable both of revelation and of pretense.
From this uneasy formalism, a verse by al-Mutanabbi emerges as an unstable
moral measure. The question is not posed through words alone but embodied
in the fragility of the form itself: are we witnessing an expression of an
authentic essence, or merely a representation? Here, ethics are transformed
into a visible trace – a fissure in color, a fracture in line – and the human being
becomes legible through the marks left by the body, rather than the values it
claims to uphold.