The unique architectural structure Mobile Art recently inaugurated in the forecourt of the Institut du Monde Arabe. It has given Paris a new permanent exhibition space devoted to contemporaneity in all its guises. Mobile Art deliberately eschews orthogonal logic in favor of curves and a spiraling structure that invites the viewer's imagination to investigate the space. Mobile Art's outer shell seems to be constantly evolving, endowing it with a capacity for virtual, organic expansion as its pliant, fluid trajectories evoke the secret procedures that dictate the mysteries of artistic creation. No exhibition space could be a more appropriate setting for a joint exhibition of works by Mehdi Qotbi and Yahya, showcasing the ongoing dialogue between the two artists.
Invisible Light is an encounter between a painter and a sculptor – between two and threedimensions, relief and color, oil and bronze, words and shapes. The calligrapher-artist MehdiQotbi and the sculptor and designer of objets d'art Yahya present seventeen works thatmagnificently encapsulate the dialogue between the two artists in an imaginary languagethat freely reinterprets the calligraphic tradition in Islamic art. Together the two artists havecreated a series of intricately interwoven signs and letters that create a new form ofabstraction. The three-dimensional calligraphy is infused by light that is by turns immanentand transcendent, conferring a quasi-magical aura on the sculptures, shown for the first timein Zaha Hadid's unique new exhibition space at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris. Thesculptures are immobile, yet somehow shimmer and dance, suggesting a world of light andshade. The abstract forms consist of arbitrary signs bearing no explicit message, yet stillrecount an epic, poetic narrative of the encounter between East and West, where cultureschange each other through exchanges, and where artists invent contemporaneity bydreaming of an age-old calligraphic tradition with universal relevance.
Yahya and Mehdi Qotbi's exclusive exhibition presents seventeen UAOs (unidentified artisticobjects) like newly hatched stars in the skies of creation, striving for formal perfection overmeaning. By setting out on a quest to seek impossible, paradoxical "invisible light", Yahya andMehdi Qotbi have made their mark in art's greatest adventure: the search for absolutes.
More about the artists:
YAHYA
Yahya is a self-taught artist whose work is characterized by cultural fusion. He is himself ablend of cultures, nationalities, and religions: he was born in London in 1972 to a ChristianAnglo-German mother and a Jewish Moroccan father and converted to Islam as an adult.He eschews formal academic references in his art, preferring to anchor his art in theparticularly demanding, age-old craft of coppersmithing. He perfects the potentiality of themetal and is passionate about the possibility of sculpting light. Decoupage, hammering,piercing, and engraving copper are at the heart of his syncretic language that meldstradition and contemporary art. He aims for his delicate art to tread the frontier between Eastand West, rooting his work there to bring about peace. His dream is to unite the incrediblecreative urge of the two ancient cultures through Eastern elegance and Western minimalism,voicing a thought that is constantly rooted in emotion and opening his arms to a future thatincessantly fantasizes its own past. His obsession with harmony has led him to a compromisebetween representation and abstraction in words and letters – tiny signs whose simplepresence sparks images in the minds of men. Taking script as his guide, he can give free reinto his elegance, audacity, and mystery. Yahya's monumental works are equally at home inroyal palaces, splendid villas, and New York lofts.
MEHDI QOTBI
Mehdi Qotbi discovered a passion for drawing at an early age, studying Fine Art in Rabat,Toulouse, and Paris. A few decades later, in 2005, he returned to Morocco, where hebecame a member of the Consultative Committee on Human Rights, working tirelessly tobuild bridges between cultures. His Majesty King Mohammed VI appointed him president ofthe National Museum Foundation in 2011. He has continued his art alongside his other duties.His paintings, admired all over the world, open a window onto the infinite. They stand at thecrossroads between East, West, and Africa, between the abstraction of geometry and thesubtle elegance of Arabic Islamic decorative art, inciting the viewer to let his gaze roamthrough the whorling patterns of the Arabic calligraphy infused with uniquely contemporarycreativity.Mehdi Qotbi's works have been exhibited on every continent. His art is included in a numberof prestigious collections, including the Musée de la Ville de Paris, the Pompidou Centre, theBritish Museum, the Museums of Fine Arts in Houston and Jeddah (Saudi Arabia), and theNational Gallery of Art in Amman (Jordan).
Curators: Elisabeth Azoulay and Jérôme Neutres
Exhibition design: Nathalie Crinière
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