2012, fluorescent tubes, size may vary. Exhibition view of Art Dubai, 2013, Dubai. Courtesy of the artist and Jane Lombard Gallery, New York.

In the Absence of Evidence to the Contrary is a sculptural installation composed of dozens of fluorescent lights extending from the ceiling down to the floor. This luminescent structure stretches upwards like a tree. The horizontal neon lights spread across the floor, grounding the structure like roots, while the vertical lights evoke a powerful and colossal trunk reaching towards the sky. On each tube, different phrases are written in English or Arabic from sura 24 of the Quran, entitled, “The Light.” We can therefore discern adages or moral imperatives praising a transcendent and omniscient God, as well as the way in which he is associated with the symbolism of light. Notably in verse 36, it is written, “God is the light of the heavens and the earth. An image for his light is a niche in which there is a lamp placed in a glass. The glass is like a shining star which is lit from a blessed olive tree that is neither eastern nor western. Its oil seems to light up even though it has not been touched the fire.”

The environment of the In the Absence of Evidence to the Contrary installment is brimming with an intense, dazzling white light. This luster does not fail to bring to mind the light of monotheistic divinity. In becoming light, God is never truly incarnate and cannot be physically represented.

The symbolism of divine presence through light, also present in the work of Dan Flavin, recalls the impact of the minimalist movement in mounir fatmi’s piece. The proximity of shapes is as visible as the principal of organization of materials in Dan Flavin’s Monument for V. Tatlin. While the American artist pays tribute to Russian constructivism and these architectural principals, mounir fatmi cultivates a dual reference with In the Absence of Evidence to the Contrary. This installation, which at first seems very far removed from the structure of the Third International designed by Vladimir Tatlin in 1920, evokes the relationship to architecture in mounir fatmi’s apprehension of exhibition space.

In the Absence of Evidence to the Contrary therefore works as a visual trap. The eye of the spectator moves from one language to the other, without being able to define the words. He or she is thus required to approach the light in order to read the text on the luminescent tubes. In this hypnotic epiphany, the visible text tests our retinal tenacity. Visual chaos is provoked, luminous spots remain imprinted, and a kinetic effect closes the eyes. Our eyes retain the memory of the text and we project this text onto everything that we see. Light can only be a visual experience, or rather a visual illusion. Is it divine revelation? Does this bright light not become blinding? We may then wonder if we really must believe everything we see… until we have evidence to the contrary.

2017, Pigment print on fine art in 27 x 40cm, 35 x 52 cm and 70 x 105 cm each. Exhibition view from Peripheral Vision, Art Front Gallery, 2017, Tokyo. Courtesy of the artist and Art Front Gallery, Tokyo

« Peripheral Vision » is a series of four black & white photographic portraits of the artist taken from the front, the back and of his left and right profiles. His face partly disappears behind a large white geometry protractor he holds in his hand, at eye level – his eyes remain visible thanks to two holes in the center of the measuring instrument. The futuristic esthetic of this setup is reminiscent of an avant-gardist artistic approach conceived as a way of renewing the way we look at what surrounds us, a new awareness of what connects us to the world and of the comprehension of its limits. In his book Tractacus logico-philosophicus, the Austrian philosopher Wittgenstein addresses the question of limits from an essentially linguistic point of view: “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” The series proposed in « Peripheral Vision » highlights the shortcomings of the esthetic language and its incapacity to translate the thoughts of the person employing it. In this way, it elaborates an artistic project that is doomed to fail before it can even be formulated.

In human biology, peripheral vision combines with central – or foveal – vision. The latter requires the subject to focus his or her attention on a fixation point and is said to be detailed and analytical. « Peripheral vision » on the other hand delivers general impressions. It allows the extremely rapid perception of movements, even in the far periphery, and provides information on the overall state of a visual situation. The work addresses the question of vision as a set of cognitive processes and metal operations that contribute to the perception of our environment. The scientific terminology is used here to designate mounir fatmi’s specific artistic vista, whose definition, expressed through the photographic self-portraits, is supplemented with psychological, philosophical, geometric, esthetic and ethical conceptions.

Combining figurativeness and geometrical abstraction, the photographs constitute an illustration of the artist’s esthetic program. But as a matter of fact, this series of self-portraits evokes another such program: that of Frederick Soddy, a mathematician and Nobel Prize winner in chemistry who wrote a poem called The Kiss Precise that is connected to Descartes’ theorem of tangent circles. A fundamental reference in mounir fatmi’s work, the scientist poet’s face disappears almost entirely behind complex geometric constructions. It contributes to creating a representation of artistic correspondences: that of the kiss as a point of balance and encounter between poetic sensitivity and formal precision. A gesture common to both works of art, a similar artistic strategy derived from Jackson Pollock’s techniques of dripping and all-over: covering and erasing.

This process keeps the figurative authority of the portrait at a distance. The twisting and playing that constitutes its main principle underlines the importance of the viewer’s gaze and temporarily reverses the respective positions of the viewer and the artist by making the latter an attentive observer of the public walking passed the piece. The work reconstructs a mobile portrait of the living subject, in which his sensitivity and his sources of inspiration are revealed. It also creates a mask, that of the contemporary artist, with his particular power: peripheral vision. This decentralized and global view perceives links and connections. With a wider perception, devoid of blinders, it encourages us to look all around instead of settling for what is right in front of us. « Peripheral Vision » echoes the thought of German philosopher Schopenhauer, expressed in these terms: “Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.”