Artist: Tarik Chebli

My work is a representation of unknown and enigmatic data, which I try to paint. I do not want my paintings to refer to our daily life. I never paint the man or his buildings. I want my paintings to represent a distant, Virgin country, which is not on any map. Nature has its own life. It constantly evolves autonomously and in parallel with the world of man, which delves into its world as if it was studying something else, something superior. It is like a break, a rest, a refuge from our life in society. Problems, worries and human contingencies seem so insignificant when we observe an ant colony.

The use of chance in my practice results from the fact that I have noticed that things done without will are much better and much more beautiful than the ones made in a concerted way. I find it ironic that the want to control what is happening appears useless and even counterproductive. The more foolish the gesture, the more the results have a chance to be interesting.This effect can come from scrapings, sprays of paints, blows of a rag, blows of a hammer, a knife, a tear the canvas, burns, covering artworks with different substances. I try combinations of different processes in order not to limit myself to mastery, but to leave space for surprises. I alternate between instinctual phases and concerted phases with a figurative intent, sometimes for months. These different ways of painting mix and feed each other. It is possible to see the combination of elements made in a fraction of a second, in violent and spontaneous ways and those elements, which are made with a brush, over time, with precision and delicacy. These figurative elements combine with the possible representations of abstract elements. For example, a scrape or a painting agglomeration will remind one of vegetation, where a butterfly can come to rest on it. On the other hand, the abstract elements combine with the figurative elements to create retinal sensations, which interpret the force of the physical gestures. The effect of these gestures can discovered through the analysis of colours, shapes and strange materialities. To evoke an analysis of the secret life within these paintings is a real pleasure, because these creatures are not well known. We have never touched them. We can only imagine their gelatinous, viscous or rough textures. In my paintings, a strange abstract, accidental, form, could just as well be the representation of a species still unknown. Some creatures are hidden, partially visible and only appear after a long observation, which, according to Odilon Redon, brings mystery to the painting. According to Redon ”The sense of mystery should always resides in the ambiguity, in the double, triple aspects, suspicions of appearance (images in pictures), shapes that are going to be, or that will be according to the state of mind of the looker.” My painting oscillates between the pleasure of the manipulation of materials and that of the reproduction of figures. I seek a certain beauty, one of tensions, discrepancies, where plastic and acrylic paint become organic substances.