In my abstract paintings, I seek to create singular perceptual experiences of colour via a sustained investigation of standardized materials. This constraint-based process has led me to question the limits of materials, those of the canvas, and even those of painting as an artistic discipline. I thus espouse an expanded definition of painting (Fares, 2004), i.e. one that is enriched by notions of dimensionality, reproducibility, movement, history and the presentation context of works.
Motivated by a research ideal, I turn my curiosity-driven attention to a specific material in each of my projects. I then manipulate this material according to intuitive experimentation protocols. Since 2011, I have successively studied industrial silkscreen inks, black and white acrylic pigments and Plexiglas – transparent, coloured, mirrored. Well-versed in the history of abstraction, in my studio I discern the emergence of “pictorial” forms, which I then unfold. The use of unconventional formats, such as the tondo, the shaped canvas or the specific object (Judd, 1964), foregrounds the paintings’ material dimension. In each of my series, I seek to bring forth all of the material’s chromatic possibilities. The painting’s spatial display is designed to highlight their variation, which is unexpected given the initial constraints.
Through this process, I aim to fully mobilize the perceptual complexity generated by the painting, the visual effect of which challenges its quality as an object and its obvious yet puzzling production process. The pictorial space I strive for fluctuates between stability and movement, between surface and depth, between the tactile and the optical. In embodying these contradictions, I strongly believe that an abstract painting can act as a counterweight to screens, thus opening spaces for beneficial contemplation, reflection and curiosity, in a world dominated by images and messages.
