FOUAD BELLAMINE, PAINTING LESSON

L’appartement 22’s program continues with an event with painter Fouad Bellamine initiated by Abdellah Karroum. Of course, it is about showing his work and accompanying him in an encounter with the public, but it is also a question of interrogating the resources that the artist explores. With this event, we propose an experience of the arts with a program centered around questions of installing work in a space and of artistic exchange (painting/music, painting/architecture, painting/writing…). How do we exceed the statute of an exhibition with that of a proposition? What is the place of art in our lives? What is the role of the artist in the world? How does the artist share his experience of art? … A certain number of questions as well as the lack of debate about contemporary artistic practice in Morocco sparked our desire to create this manifestation which is a pretext for encounters and for interrogating projects, ideas, and artists. It is about the first encounter, which, at the same time, inscribes the theme of teaching art and interrogates the work elaborated by an artist, that of Fouad Bellamine. It is thus about a painter both in theory and in practice because, paralleling his life as an artist, he teaches fine arts and has made paintings in public, notably in 1985 at the gallery “Passages” (Troyes, France). His critical and theoretical positions lead international art critics to consider him as the most convincing Moroccan painter of his generation. His most important work is summarized in a singular approach with painting in which the relationship between the artist and his artwork implies his relationship with the space, supports, media, color, drawing… He celebrates the idea that there is no Moroccan painting, but Moroccan painters… For Fouad Bellamine, the project of occupying this private apartment in Rabat for a month consists of “investing the space and transforming it into a site for practice, reflection, and debate.” The space’s cubic structure is transformed according to the artist’s desire in order to prepare the public. Visitors will thus be “placed” along three of the walls and the fourth will be the site of action or of speaking… This theatrical schema corresponds to one of Fouad Bellamine’s emblematic forms, the famous parallelepiped (stage space) in which the artist transcends the mise-en-abîme of the act of painting. It is not about an exhibition but an encounter between the artists and publics (according to Fouad Bellamine’s own terms, the artist does not exhibit, he exhibits himself). If we stop to reflect: numerous experiences at the heart of art history will be evoked in order to enrich the debate and reflection. For this painting lesson, Fouad Bellamine invites a number of intellectuals to intervene with texts, interrogating them and proposing them to the pubic in order to spark and interpolate debate (Emanuel Borja, Abdellah Bounfour, Aziz Daki, Ahmed Essyad, Edmond Amran El-Maleh, Mohamed Loakira, Tarek Oualalou and Marie Redonnet… evoking, each through the focus of his or her work, Antonin Artaud, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Jean Genet and Michel Leiris…).

The conversations continue with Fouad Bellamine and lend themselves to the game of exchanging and “teaching art” between unveiling and meditation: “In accepting Abdellah Karroum’s invitation to take over his art space for a month, I became conscious of the risk of working openly, face-to-face with the public who generally only has the right to the definitive result of the act of painting. To give reason to the ‘logic’ and ‘unreason’ of my profession, this will be my intention.”

///// A Painting Lesson with Fouad Bellamine ///// Event at L’appartement 22, located on the third floor of 279 avenue Mohamed V in Rabat ///// From Thursday, 12 December 2002, to Wednesday, 15 January 2003 ///// Documentation: www.hors-champs.net ///// Additional information: +212 0 63 59 82 88 /////