Dala Nasser + Nabil Harb
Fire Singing Soft Texture
4.30.21 - 5.3.21
I’ve been lost
I’ve been lost
I’ve been lost
I’ve been lost for a while.
I’ve been listening to this song all day. It came out yesterday and is a melancholic umbrella filled with a hopeful looped bass against the soft cycle of an angelic voice.
I’ve been putting off writing this because I’ve felt lost, singular.
But here in G15 we are not talking about being singularly lost, isolated. We are talking about a collaboration, plural. We are no longer lost alone. A collaboration born through the past two years in separate departments in graduate school, lost. But coming from a shared lineage and connection to place, here and there. Here being New Haven. There being the middle east connected through birth, blood, and time. There, a place that to some has been lost and is floating consistently in divided minds undefined, not completely unlike here.
But not in here.
Not to make it solely about a place, place, because really what is it, it’s art.
But art made from two souls that overlap and use the specifics of place to inform their specific use of material and light. Light to shine on another frequency with angelic voices. Angels that are only angels because of the darkness. Found only through being lost with our feet still moving.
The black and white photographs of Nabil Harb, made in Florida behind a cloud of smoke lit by a forensic insider's lens. One has to be intimate to look at the details, to be forensic in observation not taking a single drop of sweat or mosquito for granted. Everyone and everything is on trial, and this trial is both hot and an existential spiral. We wouldn't want a trial of any other fashion, and neither would Kafka. Only to use the specifics of intimacy to abstract and create something wholly new that requires a prolonged looking at a decided frame, stuttering sequence, and boiling blood.
Where the past year has been lost, visual poetics recognize the presence of loss through creating, no longer swept down the drain to live in a concrete labyrinth. You cannot take the dust for granted in this labyrinth, this prison beneath the water.
Talking with the Florida humidity and forced light, monochrome awareness, Dala Nasser’s paintings, material, material given life through matter compounded through the mind, hands, and intuition found in the studio with research, feeling. But this studio is met with the specifics, the mind; the imagination is met with the specifics of the land, here and there, of the sweat, blood, legacy, and wait what is this medium. A medium. A medium that is able to sing to the textures that exist outside of our plane. Textures that expose themselves to us through iron oxide raining from the stolen pillars, crumbling.
It’s gonna take a bit of work
Ohh work
Now that you’re here.
The next song finally takes over.
Fire Singing Soft Texture
4.30.21 - 5.3.21
I’ve been lost
I’ve been lost
I’ve been lost
I’ve been lost for a while.
I’ve been listening to this song all day. It came out yesterday and is a melancholic umbrella filled with a hopeful looped bass against the soft cycle of an angelic voice.
I’ve been putting off writing this because I’ve felt lost, singular.
But here in G15 we are not talking about being singularly lost, isolated. We are talking about a collaboration, plural. We are no longer lost alone. A collaboration born through the past two years in separate departments in graduate school, lost. But coming from a shared lineage and connection to place, here and there. Here being New Haven. There being the middle east connected through birth, blood, and time. There, a place that to some has been lost and is floating consistently in divided minds undefined, not completely unlike here.
But not in here.
Not to make it solely about a place, place, because really what is it, it’s art.
But art made from two souls that overlap and use the specifics of place to inform their specific use of material and light. Light to shine on another frequency with angelic voices. Angels that are only angels because of the darkness. Found only through being lost with our feet still moving.
The black and white photographs of Nabil Harb, made in Florida behind a cloud of smoke lit by a forensic insider's lens. One has to be intimate to look at the details, to be forensic in observation not taking a single drop of sweat or mosquito for granted. Everyone and everything is on trial, and this trial is both hot and an existential spiral. We wouldn't want a trial of any other fashion, and neither would Kafka. Only to use the specifics of intimacy to abstract and create something wholly new that requires a prolonged looking at a decided frame, stuttering sequence, and boiling blood.
Where the past year has been lost, visual poetics recognize the presence of loss through creating, no longer swept down the drain to live in a concrete labyrinth. You cannot take the dust for granted in this labyrinth, this prison beneath the water.
Talking with the Florida humidity and forced light, monochrome awareness, Dala Nasser’s paintings, material, material given life through matter compounded through the mind, hands, and intuition found in the studio with research, feeling. But this studio is met with the specifics, the mind; the imagination is met with the specifics of the land, here and there, of the sweat, blood, legacy, and wait what is this medium. A medium. A medium that is able to sing to the textures that exist outside of our plane. Textures that expose themselves to us through iron oxide raining from the stolen pillars, crumbling.
It’s gonna take a bit of work
Ohh work
Now that you’re here.
The next song finally takes over.
Soon Stump, 2020, 20” x 13 1/3”, Pigment Print
Kingsford Road, 2020, 20” x 13 1/3”, Pigment Print
Untitled, 2021, 40” x 60”, Pigment Print
Scroll and Key - Stairs, 2020, 70 3/4” x 53 1/4”, Iron Oxide, Salt, Ash, Charcoal, Discarded Fabric, Resin, Latex, Plaster
Clay in the Garage, 2019, 30” x 20”, Pigment Print
Scroll and Key - Garden, 2020, 86 2/3” x 70 3/4”, Iron Oxide, Discarded Fabric, Latex, Leaves From Garden, Toilet Paper
Allegra, 2020, 33 1/3” x 50”, Pigment Print