About the painting
Imed Ben Tahar is a painter and a translator, and perhaps it is this life between languages that has been scratched into the stone here: dark marks that recall Arabic script but cannot be read. His statement says that a letter freeing itself from a word can become a world of its own. The picture dates from 2015 and is among the earliest in this selection. You step close, try to decipher it, and in the end read only yourself.
Description
Dark marks on a rough grey ground recall Arabic script without ever becoming readable. A few yellow patches punctuate it like underlinings in an old notebook. This painting asks for closeness: only at arm’s length do the fine scratched lines in the paint appear. 40 × 60 cm.
In the room
The painting hangs here at its real size, next to a 210 cm sofa and a person who is 175 cm tall.
