The Artist's Legacy: Elevating the Mundane to an Aesthetic Experience
The artist has left a rare legacy: that of a visionary who knew how to elevate the mundane to the rank of an aesthetic experience. His work, made of textures, light, and freedom, continues to make matter and imagination dialogue, inscribing his name among the major and most inventive figures of contemporary Tunisian art.
A Beautiful Exhibition at Le Violon Bleu Gallery
A beautiful exhibition dedicated to the artist Abderrazak Sahli is on display until December 19th at the Le Violon Bleu gallery in Sidi Bou Said. Titled "Contre-Point II", it showcases some aspects of a prolific, rich, and diverse body of work, that of an artist with a singular vision and a tactile approach.
The Artist's Background
Born in Hammamet in 1941, Abderrazak Sahli received a comprehensive education at the Tunis School of Fine Arts (painting, 1969), before pursuing his studies at the University of Paris 8 (plastic arts) and the Paris School of Fine Arts (engraving, 1974). He lived in France until 1987, the year of his definitive return to Hammamet, where he gave birth to a flourishing body of work until his passing in 2009.
A Bold Approach to Matter
Sahli distinguished himself by his bold approach to matter. No support, no tool, no object resisted him. With him, everything became a pretext for creation. Inspired by everyday life as well as by the approach of the "Support-Surface" movement initiated by Claude Viallat, he experimented with the repetition of forms, chromatic saturation, textile collages using worn-out sheets, jute canvas, old clothes, and the abolition of the frame, thus opening painting to a free and organic breath.
A Poetic and Sensory Dimension
His work goes beyond mere plastic experimentation to reach a poetic and sensory dimension. The kortass or the bakou, a modest package in kraft paper from the neighborhood grocer, transforms into a structure and volume in his hands, sometimes accompanied by vocal performances. Similarly, the olive harvesting canvases or domestic wooden objects become, under his gesture, full-fledged works, where matter speaks as much as color.
A Rare Legacy
The artist has left a rare legacy: that of a visionary who knew how to elevate the mundane to the rank of an aesthetic experience. His work, made of textures, light, and freedom, continues to make matter and imagination dialogue, inscribing his name among the major and most inventive figures of contemporary Tunisian art.
The Exhibition "Contre-Point II"
The expression Abderrazak Sahli touched all registers of form, without ever being confined to a genre or academic discipline. The exhibition "Contre-Point II", which extends the one presented at the same location in 2009, celebrates this fertile diversity. It highlights certain aspects of the artist's "doing" from 1987, marked by a formal freedom.
A Variety of Techniques and Mediums
On display are the works he created on different supports such as the bakou, the sakhan (wooden frames for drying laundry), jute canvas..., a variation in technique (stencil, pointillism, cutting,...) and medium. We encounter, of course, his emblematic motifs freely composed (disarticulated calligraphy, architectural motifs, objects of everyday life) painted on jute canvas or perforated in fabric, applied to chassis or enveloping his famous sakhan, a fetish support reminiscent of his childhood.
A Pure Place of Sensation
"Through the technique of alternating vivid colors and neutral tones, the space of the support-surface is no longer just a pure place of sensation; if it explodes with objects of all kinds, they are never more than simulacra that remind us of the very essence of painting as lines and colors in an arranged order," writes Rachida Triki, a university specialist in aesthetics. On display until December 19th, 2025.
