Adel Abdessemed. Air

Adel Abdessemed’s art undertakes a full and stubborn engagement with freeing the image from formal demonstrations, so as to go straight to the real—that is to say, to substantial trauma and fantasy–very far from any pretention of representing “reality” or sublimating the “imaginary.” AIR is an artist’s book gathering reproductions of charcoal drawings of bodies suspended in the empty surface of the paper, floating into a non-place, out of time, as if escaping, flying, dropping, disappearing, or dying. The works revisit the usual definition of drawing as a composition of lines; they are traces, shadows, scratches, interstices, gaps, and opacities that offer a unique experience of the density and evanescence of the (in)visible. A poem by Ocean & Wavz echoes Abdessemed’s drawing practice. This publication is produced and supported by the Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, on the occasion of the 2022 exhibition Adel Abdessemed: An Imperial Message.