Adel Abdessemed: Politics of Drawing

Cahiers d’Art presents Politics of Drawing an exhibition of new works by Adel Abdessemed in the gallery space at 14, rue du Dragon, Paris. The exhibition introduces three large archival pigment prints by Abdessemed published by Cahiers d’Art for the exhibition, as well as one original drawing. The new prints, Hibou (Owl), Cerf (Stag) and Pigeon depict the images of these animals which Abdessemed describes as ‘distant brothers.” As he remarks about Cerf, ‘I think I have met the stag in the depths of the night while walking in the forest…’ The exhibition also includes a series of original drawings by the artist entitled Exil. The series develops a motif that entered his artistic language in 1995 with his neon of the same name.

A poem is specially written for this exhibition by Adonis, a poet with whom Adel Abdessemed has already made an artist’s book and a book of correspondence. The poem, titled L’océan du réel (‘The Ocean of Reality’) is presented for the first time at the gallery.

With ‘Politics of Drawing’, the artist has proposes “a continual, emotional, spiritual and naked movement for the protection of life,” an interrogation of our humanity and a ‘reflection upon the present state of the world’.

Accompanying the exhibition, the Cahiers d’Art revue features an essay by Daniel Birnbaum (Director of the Moderna Museet, Stockholm) on the drawings of Adel Abdessemed together with a portfolio of recent drawings by the artist, and the poem about Adel Abdessemed’s work by Adonis, The Ocean of Reality, which is on view in the gallery.