Crude Expression-Inside the work of Fadi Yazigi
"I get up. I cook. I sleep. I paint," says Fadi Yazigi, equating his life to the natural reflex of breathing. "Art has no purpose." Once somebody tries to give it a purpose, it becomes a tool, and no longer art in its purest meaning. "It is not easy being a painter like me," he admits.
Yazigi paints with quick, black brush-strokes on colourful backgrounds. His rawness of hand and childish style capture the vulnerability of mankind and the indecency of existence.
Yazigi's works on canvas are typically untitled, yet their style is distinctive; naive yet severe. One particular work made in 2006 features a panel of 49 caricature portraits of humans and animals with vivid individual expressions crammed into equal squares; a cacophony of wide open eyes, broad smiles, gesturing hands and limbs. How deep these smiles actually go is up to the viewer to decide.
Yazigi makes no claims to grandeur. He seeks clarity. And clarity, by definition, must be simple. He experiments with vigour, constantly searching for new combinations of media and his choice of materials is always based on a belief in staying as close to the source as possible. Yazigi has created paintings on surfaces ranging from two-metre canvases to pocket-sized paper, using oil, acrylic and ink. With pottery and ceramic plates he has explored radial and circular relationships between the movements and expressions of his characters. His reliefs are extremely tactile, emphasising the transmission of images through pinched clay pieces on pressed fingertips; whereas his bronze sculptures have an ominous, weighty presence that belies their smallish size.
In all his works, Yazigi's characters must stand, bend, crawl or lie down to accommodate their allotted space. Their expressions are very vivid, and most importantly, his brushstrokes are always immediate. This devotion to "the first touch" is crucial to his concept of art. "If I make changes or additions, it is no longer the original expression," he explains. His clay reliefs also seek to capture that transient moment of first impressions. Each piece is pinched, poked, pushed or patted just once for it to take part in the whole sequence of events. Crudeness in style echoes crudeness in content; anger, disgust and despair can only be imparted by that "first touch" which strictly denies any allegiance to civility or protocol.
Yazigi's paintings played an important part in the inaugural exhibition series at Ayyam Gallery in Damascus. The background of his canvases can be left plain, or drenched with colour; often psychedelic "like candy wrappers" he says. The figures curl around in a nautilus shell-like pattern, starting from the upper right-hand corner and occupying the periphery before filling the middle of the canvas. Creating rhythm and movement, they dance like musical notes. "There are no heroes," Yazigi affirms. "The people behind the stage; they are the most important ones."
Bronze sculptures are Yazigi's most favoured form of expression (his bronze boy "Che" surpassed pre-sale estimates at the October 2007 Sotheby's auction in London; while two of his paintings were sold in Dubai at the February and November 2007 Christie's auctions). Since they are three-dimensional, these are the only works he actually names; as if they were born embodiments of the concepts that his two-dimensional art explores in nebulous form. The smooth, bronze surface is a crucial part of his attempt to capture immediacy and give an unhindered first impression of serenity. It is here that we acquire a deeper view of what might lie behind the child-like smiles of his figures. Half-man, half-animal and dwarfish with dimensions that carefully avoid adhering to the classical Golden Mean of balance and harmony, Yazigi's sculptures reveal an unhinged psychological dimension. "It's me!" is the title of one smiling human head with coffee-bean eyes reaching out with a bent neck from a snail's shell. It is a touching moment of curious self-assertion; an innocent face reaching outside the safety of its shell. "My sculptures are complex personalities," Yazigi explains. "Slightly sickly, deformed, diminutive people and yet they keep their smile. They keep hoping for something better - optimistically, even stupidly."
Yazigi's fascination with the randomness of human interaction is driving his current wave of experimentation. He is now composing a series of paintings, in his inimitable style of portrait panels. Unlike before the canvases are checkered and the boxes alternate between portraits and prose. Yazigi is applying a wider variety of shading in order to present a more realistic depiction of his subjects. But who are these subjects? Random people, people he met at the groceries, friends of friends he was introduced to at dinner parties, strangers he has walked by on the street. Next to each of these portraits, Yazigi is writing how each person describes his or her view on life. This is a snapshot of the spontaneous and unpremeditated; whatever encapsulates the human psyche at that given moment; as immediate as ink on canvas.
For more information on the artist contact:
Ayyam Gallery
Zain Mahjoub
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