HAMMADI BEN SAAD (1965-2025)
A self-taught artist and tireless nomad, Hamadi Ben Saad has developed, for some forty years, an artistic practice in direct resonance with the urban world and its encounters.
Detached from all conventions, his art is subordinated solely to the physical properties and availabilities of the material: Kraft paper, newspaper, cardboard, advertising posters, and fabric scraps are all concrete elements that the artist manipulates to create monumental or medium-sized works. These are composed according to logics of surface, texture, and rhythm. Upon closer inspection, they summon in turn the works of Arte Povera, Supports/Surfaces, Nouveau Réalisme, and other avant-gardes of the sixties and seventies whose procedures, materials, and spirit the artist shares.
Detached from all conventions, his art is subordinated solely to the physical properties and availabilities of the material: Kraft paper, newspaper, cardboard, advertising posters, and fabric scraps are all concrete elements that the artist manipulates to create monumental or medium-sized works. These are composed according to logics of surface, texture, and rhythm. Upon closer inspection, they summon in turn the works of Arte Povera, Supports/Surfaces, Nouveau Réalisme, and other avant-gardes of the sixties and seventies whose procedures, materials, and spirit the artist shares.
An artist drawn to the question of the human subject and the representation of the body, he is also the one who opposes it. Respectful of the founding prohibition of representation of Arab-Muslim visual culture, he is simultaneously its detractor. One thing is certain, Ben Saad creates independently of trends, cultural demand, the requirements of tradition as well as those of modernity or postmodernity.
Beneath a sober, direct, and almost childlike exterior, many things infuse in his work. Expression of the desire to paint as the urge arises, the ability to rise above norms, an assumed and claimed creative pleasure, and finally a tension towards a universal discourse – an artist to be put forward and highlighted, whose creative experience is worth pausing on, whatever artistic preference, for or against, one confesses.
Beneath a sober, direct, and almost childlike exterior, many things infuse in his work. Expression of the desire to paint as the urge arises, the ability to rise above norms, an assumed and claimed creative pleasure, and finally a tension towards a universal discourse – an artist to be put forward and highlighted, whose creative experience is worth pausing on, whatever artistic preference, for or against, one confesses.
Exhibitions
