MCC GALLERY presents first major solo exhibition of the multidisciplinary artist Amine El Gotaibi, a large-scale exhibition that brings together nine important projects in the artist's career, realized between 2011 and 2021. Entitled Visite, the exhibition features a over thirty works developed by the artist over the past ten years, ranging from sculpture to photography, from drawing to video installation.
----------------------------------------
Taking over the 600m2 space of MCC GALLERY, with an immersive scenography, and in a labyrinthine tour designed by the artist himself, the exhibition Visite quickly plunges the visitor into an aesthetic world where dreams unite with reality, translating the imaginary possibility of following the paths that El Gotaibi has walked for years.
In his visual/artistic quest, as evidenced by all of his works, El Gotaibi questions identity without imposing it, without making a speech. It is through very precise acts that become, like Brechtian theater, a socially and politically engaged art; that his work merges the aesthetic approach to the political fact. It is not him, but his work that transmits the meaning.
Around the project Dry River (started in 2007), El Gotaibi embroiders the universe of his exhibition Visite to show works made of oxymorons and dichotomies. This dry river is the very allegory of our existence, it is the trace and the memory of this fertility that was once and is no longer. According to El Gotaibi, each project is carried by a succession of different and mysterious stages that can take it to its most unknown ends. This is the case of Dry River (20..), which gave rise to Visite to Okavango, another river that fascinates the artist and fuels his desire to create.
With the project Nouvelle religion (2012), El Gotaibi deepens his reflection on the tensions between archaic forms of belief and contemporary religiosity. By placing the footballand the apple in dialogue with original sin, El Gotaibi highlights the potentially distressing rise of the sport.
In 2014, El Gotaibi presented Ring of Submission (2014) at the Institut du Monde Arabe (IMA). Through this work, the artist questions the dogmas and traditions that condition modern societies. With the most recent projects such as National Territory (2016), Perspective de brebis (2019), Perspective de séduction (2020), & Lion de l'Atlas (2021), Amine questions social categorizations and the individual's relationship to technical and political power. The artist thus pushes the doors of a new experimentation by introducing wool and concrete in the palette of the materials he used.
Questioning his African identity and culture, the artist creates a monumental installation entitled Ba Moyi Ya Africa (2019) which translates literally in the local language: The Suns of Africa. This work was presented for the first time during the Young Congo Biennale in 2019. It was an opportunity to unravel clichés & misunderstandings about Africa, this continent to which the artist belongs without belonging! Another paradox that the artist solves through travel ...
To materialize the metaphor on which he works, the multitude of suns, El Gotaibi installed thirty three projectors that complement each other, form a circle similar to the sun and give off a blinding light. This represents a bright sun which refers directly to the title of the work: The Suns of Africa.
Following the Congo, El Gotaibi traveled to South Africa the same year for a residency at the prestigious Nirox Foundation sculpture park. This South African stopover is part of his latest artistic project, Visit to Okavango, a collaborative land expedition across the continent - from Morocco to Botswana - which aims to promote a new vision of Africa, more authentic, far from the media stereotypes & myths that still largely prevail.
During his residency in South Africa, El Gotaibi created a symbolic monumental installation in the form of a 15.3 meter long and 4 meter high wall built on a hill. He also produced a detailed documentation of his stay and the process of realization of his work, which he presents for this exhibition in the form of a photographic triptych documenting the process of ideating, making and installing in si-tu of the installation Sun(W)hole (2020).
These works gathered for the exhibition Visite thus constitute, as a whole, a metaphorical counter-power that places the viewer's gaze at the aesthetic, poetic, narratological and political sources of the artist's thought. They are a united and unified corpus, solid and indissociable, an exhortation to let oneself be transported by the desire to tirelessly reread the metamorphoses of a land in the making; in its different colors, skins and sounds. A land that shines with sunlight and creative force: the African land.
The exhibition is accompanied by a monographic publication richly documented and containing various texts of writers and art critics national and international we quote: Brahim Oulahyane (art critic), Elisa Ganivet (art historian), Fatima-Zahra Lakrissa (curator), Juan Asis (poet and translator), etc.
