Mohamed Namou / Trash-Talking: D’où naît une action parallèle
Proyectos Monclova
Colima 55,
Col. Roma Norte
Mexico City 06700
Photo: Rodrigo Viñas M.
Mohamed Namou
Trash-Talking: D’où
naît une action parallèle
Upon a first glance
into Mohamed Namou’s exhibition, one encounters a prominent sense of duality: black
and white, smooth and rough, organic and artificial —contrasts of materials,
textures and compositions held, almost silently, on the wall in the shape of
tableaus. But then, what initially appeared to wear a veil of flatness opens up
into an array of details, thus turning into a procedural multiplicity.
Works of apparent
flat dimensions hang separate from the wall, nearly floating in space, denouncing
and at the same time refusing its limitations. Hanging but superseding its
support, Namou puts the trick up for display, allowing the spectator to spear
beyond the surface and into the images backdoor. This exploration allows the tableau
to become a presence, almost blocking your way, a sculptural obstacle that,
once crossed, is proven to be a mere screen for something else.
Namou’s works bear
multiple layers of dimensionalities, playing with echoes and folds, pointing to
a bifurcation of possibilities. And so it is this notion of flatness the work underlines:
the paradox and the inertia of it.
— What don’t you like about flatness?
— It doesn’t exist in the real world.
Enhancing the
fragility of liminality, the pieces draw on the notion of the fold as a space
of pure potential, creating at once a way out and an invitation to peek in,
hence holding the viewers gaze to linger on an in-between: in a playful manner,
the pockets point to a dynamism in the tableaus, themselves filled with extending
objects; objects that transcend their surface and show their veins. Because
there is indeed movement in this branching out —a drive of its own—, drawing
the viewer towards new approximations.
Proximity also amplifies
the sense of contrast cohabitating in the work, thickening the velvety black
that resembles a threshold, opening itself to the viewer. Creating a void and emphasizing
its pull, the works textures provoke a perspective of deepness. Textures that
not only speak of such abyss but also allow for the illusion of submersion: a
black hole. Demanding contiguity.
Evoking a cut in
the linear gaze, this depth allows to move past the surface and into a sense of
forwardness —of futurity—, only to suddenly be transversed, in a pictorial
effort, by a solid element: a stone. A marble whose sleek, clean-cut surface is
quickly proven to have yet another side —an inside— running deep in the form of
a blue vein. Disrupting, like the pockets do, the notion of a defined
perceptible presence, and teasingly pointing to a split that holds the marble in
both a space of visibility and one hidden from view.
And in this process
of transmutation lingers the inter(action) where, like with slang, meaning is
shaped in a relational fashion; where the solid signifier is left behind and
placed in transit, in an almost static coming to be. Breaking down estrangement
and creating a jolt in the logos, the tableaus speak of a moldable excess; of
the trash that is let out and that is readily picked up. Impelling the image
and melting out all rigidity in order to transform: a break that nonetheless
bridges —smoothly— from mechanic to organic, making all the pieces amount to an
unequivocal new beginning.