Ali Kaaf in conversation with" Thara"

This is me

and this is how I view the world

and this is how I paint.

Interviewer: Mutaa Al-kak

Ali Kaaf was able to restore his experience with painting, and this experience made him strongly active in seeking for what is behind the unknown. This led him to a style which caused him to throw away most of his weapons as a painter, freeing himself from the concepts which chained his works down, and seizing an urgency and necessity in the search for himself. Thara met him and had this conversation with him:
You told me that your work makes you suffer from many kinds of frustrations, what are these frustrations?
Painting is very hard because you are seeking to capture something inside you and really feel it..
What is this thing?
Let us say that it is a specific point, or an abstract idea, visual idea, and you try to express it during your search. You have to be fast and run then jump but whenever you jump and fall in order to catch it with your hands, you find it that it slips from between your fingers and disappears. You find that it was merely an illusion and intangible. There was no point to begin with. This is what makes me frustrated but frustration doesn't kill every circumstance because you can find other things completely.
This frustration which I suffer from as I work, like I told you, is not negative frustration because in every circumstance you find that a new visual idea- or more- was born inside you. And you take a step of a new kind and start a new activity, and this is what can result in you finishing off your work in a new area.
There is another kind of frustration. When you crash by accident into strange things, both real and contradictory, your work takes on a life of its own and ends up in another place far from your conception. And you feel strange about it since you think it was nothing to do with you, whilst at the same time it expresses you. The viewer sees things neither from the mind nor from the thoughts. He or she may evaluate one of the paintings as if it were the most important of the paintings exhibited and they place it according to their own standards and discriminatory powers. And you, as a painter, the producer of the work, were not able to envisage such discriminations. The matter needs, with relation to you, a long time, a number of months, a year or two years until the work can live and be independent and fully extract its own importance.
Let us talk about the paintings. From where does the choice of burning come, and what are the possibilities of fire?
The material comes for you to discard its unique possibilities. This means whenever you work with paper, a desire pushes you to face the paper as a substance. The desire is mysterious but it changes with time and experience from desire, to a search, a search for the potential of the material to express your idea. That means that we assume its possible for you to draw on any paper with different materials and its also possible for you to "crush or rip" it. It is possible for you to put ink on it and wrinkle it. As a painter, you think you can stretch its limits in order avoid this wrinkling, as "Corral" painters and others do. With respect to me, if I drew on the surface of the paper a line and the paper wants to be wrinkled as a result of exposing it to water, let it be wrinkled. Then the wrinkling has new possibilities for expression, but this does not diminish the importance of the drawn line. This carries at the same time the spirit and personality of this particular material, which distinguishes it from another material.
Therefore, from this experience come many options. Its possible that the burning is begun as a result of anger or hostility. And above that its possible that the action of burning may acquire new meanings. Take, for example, the idea of puncturing holes in the paper as a result of the question: What is possible under the surface? Any painter may experience the situation of standing in front of a white, quiet, closed surface while a question arises: What is behind this surface? As a result of questions like this comes the choice to burn.
Did your time in Berlin affect you, especially in terms of German Expressionism?
Yes, and I was very close to German expressionism. These ways are attractive…It was possible for me to work with colors and paste and I asked myself: 'Where did German expressionism come from and do I really want to walk down this path? I felt that I was different from Northern Europe. I came from a different place with a completely different culture. This is one of the motivations that forces me to take the opposite way. So I liberated myself from traditional, European painting and found that paper gave me more possibilities for expression. My experience must be with paper.
I want to be free from oil paints and the concepts connected with them. I was interested in things which require simple materials and clear possibilities and I found myself working with black.
Through our long relationship I know that you obsessed with colors whenever you see colors you behave like a crazy lover. Despite that you don't draw except in black!!!
The desire to draw in black is connected in some way to the idea of fasting. In the situation of fasting, I feel that I am in real torture. I draw sometimes in colors, when I have the desire to, but I feel that I am more pre-occupied with the things which I am working on. It is a search similar to a religious search, similar to dance, which makes the dancer control himself within limited movements. He forces himself to undertake strong discipline and supervision for a long time. This gives a fantastic meaning to the insanity when it appears. In Buddhist culture there are monks that construct big paintings with colored sand grains, taking almost 5 or 6 hours to complete. In the end, on their holiday, they extend their hands and do this to the painting: Pow! They destroy it with their hands with one movement, wasting all they have done.
But this frivolous action contradicts what you said earlier about difficulty and the duration of impact?.
That's true; but I am talking about the repression of oneself for the sake of a discipline where you find yourself in front of a moment of existence with its own meaning- or else, why did you build, just to destroy? What is your purpose? These are confused matters.
We live, and we want something, and then we discover later that what we wanted was something completely different. Let us take another example from Islamic architecture which contains repeated motifs. When you enter the Mosque of Cordoba, in Andalusia, you find something awesome and colossal; never-ending arches. So you ask yourself, "Ok, why such a number of never-ending arches?" It was possible that this number of arches was less than adequate. Why does such dense repetition seem limiting in this place? I have the answer, in that it bears its own tension because of this exaggeration, and this is what is amazing, in addition to the fact that this repetition is radical from an architectural perspective, because it pushes the work to its utmost limits, or even towards movement, because it exceeds these utmost limits. Therefore, when you see it, you feel that the cells inside you are increasing their activity, and you boil over. Khan As'ad Pasha also contains extravagant choices, and bears this tension. In the end, maybe I am being contradictory, but this is my right as a human being and an artist; but it is impossible, in my opinion, to explain this idea. It is like the search for identity in a broken mirror which you are trying to put back together in order to find yourself.
Let's talk about your canvases concentrating on their content. Why do you paint? What are your works attempting to talk about?
About my opinion of the world.
But is this opinion limited and in accordance with logic?
how?
If an opinion about any particular thing is compromised of a not completely objective judgment, then the resulting stance concerning that thing would not be an objective judgment either, because this stance includes a certain level of subjective emotion.
Of course, my works are completely personal works containing attitudes from life and the world and art. You imagine a piece of gold; my works are like pieces of gold made up from a number of elements- the personal is created from them. You depend upon experience, and you can't assume that that is right or wrong.
But the standards of what is right or wrong are not firmly-fixed at all?.
I agree with you, so let's change the 'correct' terminology. My works belong to the position, a position whether it was big or small. I am unable to accept this wisdom, and it wasn't me who did accept it, it is our age which accepts it. At least it is an attitude. This is how I view the world and how I view art, and this is what I am presenting and the path I am working on. The work is purely sensitive or personal, but it includes a reading of what happens in the world, and it includes a sensitivity towards the effect of art in the world, a world which is western by definition. This is the most important thing in my work, which you see before you contained inside a frame. It also contains its own tension.
You talked about this term 'tension' before, but I didn't understand exactly what you meant. Is it tension with the meaning of 'emotion'?
No! Emotion is the wrong word, for it only expresses a small part of the process. Tension is emotion and intuition.
But as I understand it, tension has a negative meaning?
Not at all! Tension functions on the limits of the material, just like a tightrope walker in the circus. This position implies a moment of tension, because there is a risk of falling at any moment, and like this, the performer walks on the limits of an idea. This contains something important, and is the idea of the enterprise. Everyone including myself is walking normally on firm ground without even thinking about the fact they are walking, but when I walk on a tightrope I am exposing myself to danger at every moment. Man asks himself, "What is that mysterious desire to walk on a tightrope? Is it a desire to challenge logic radically and completely?" This is a radical position. Artistic work succeeds to the extent that it maintains its own tension inside itself. The works I produced which are displayed in Khan As'ad Pasha are exemplary in that they diminish the signs of authorship to the furthest extent possible, but they maintain their tension…
A focus of the tension?
That's right, a focus of the tension.
Does talk about the reception annoy you?
No, not at all.
It interests me, as a viewer, that I am attracted by the works above all else, and without any reason. What interests a viewer other than fascination by a completed work? For example, is Khan As'ad Pasha is on the personal boundary which emphasizes to me that I am a wretched uncultured child who just loves elaborate and attractive things?
I don't agree with you in that attitude.
Why?
Because a child can also deconstruct things to find out how they were made. The issues of technique do not pertain to the artist alone, because technique is the carrier connected to the material of the finished and realized piece. To put it another way, the technique is the language.
So, I can take it to understand that technique is not just a part of the finished work?
Exactly.
Ok, let's talk about technique and the viewer together. Where does the viewer misunderstand you? Or, what is the question that makes you feel that you're in one valley and the viewer in quite another?
When he says to me, "You paint in black and white!" , it is a rose of spontaneity and instantaneousness and banality. I only paint in black. What does that mean when I say I only paint in black? From the beginning of my experience, I removed white from my canvasses, and I have one single brush… and the colour black
But you have a black canvas painted with white?
That's true, but there is different dialectic here. The dialectic of one colour over another colour is not the same as the dialectic of two colours together.
What does that mean?
Because two colours together give me a fresh chance, and they alleviate the difficulty. They create a different dialogue, in which I find only casual chat, instead of what I want to say. I prefer to work with the least ambiguity possible, and as I told you, I work with one colour, which is black. I found myself, throughout the work, going down this road until I arrived at cornered places. And the colour black was stretched over the white surface, until all the white had disappeared, and the black colour was spread over the white paper, without the existence of a single line of return, the shape had been lost and had transgressed the boundaries of my conception, and I had arrived to a place which gave me no room for movement. What should I do?! I arrived at the answer by completing the painting of the canvas with black paint, considering this a new beginning, to paint over it again with white paint. The strange thing was, when I began to paint with white over the surface of the black-painted canvas, the black was the material which I worked with, and which was still my original shape underneath, it was no longer merely black in the background, but the background was the holder of a memory recollecting the first painting. So the painting conveyed a special sense, different from the other paintings. This was the basis for using fire with the works, and I did this with some small works. Then I forbade myself to do these paintings, and I banned myself from working on them with white paint. I was falling into a problem involving a shape that was getting bigger and bigger. So, how could I take any step forward towards distancing myself from any idea of returning to the colour white?
So you burnt it?!
I burnt it… the fire came as a new chance to open a new aperture and destroy black space, and in the bargain destroy the principal bearer of the colour of the paper. The fire was in the name of destruction.
It's an action requiring a lot of bravery?.
My manner of working resembles, to a great extent, that of warriors who tie their legs together. These warriors tied their legs together to the extent that they could not retreat, so that their endurance would be comfortable, and so my head is relieved at last of any ideas of returning. I think about what I see in front of me and I concentrate my energy in this direction.
Let's talk about the canvases of the three photographs, and the Slade exhibition?.
You have here one stage out of the stages of my work which has taken an important form for me over the last three years when the great Al-Siri group was working with photography.
I recall that there are 50 canvases.
I reduced their number, and reduced them again until now, there are only thirteen works on show in the Khan, and I selected 4 works to be printed onto photographic paper. I worked on these experiments to the point of concealing the shape of the form I was photographing, the form which was my own body. I was photographing myself after having covered my body with things I had selected from the place I found myself in, things with no particular meaning, such as pebbles or paper or shoes; things carrying no intended significance or reference. And when that thing 'speaks' any more than is necessary, I remove it, and take my hand, and put it as close as possible to my face. I was taking the pictures and arriving at results which remained photographs for a long while, like a week, before I moved the pictures and selected the good one, distancing myself from any thought which was previous or ready-made or 'good taste'.
And what about the music which accompanies the exhibition?
I was very cautious in my choice of music, because this is the first time an exhibition of mine is going to be accompanied by music. I asked myself 'What can this music contribute to the works? Is it something beautiful? If you closed your eyes and listened to the music on its own, would the intended effect come to you without even looking at the pictures? I have chosen this piece of 'Arfobert' after many experiments, I found that this music does not clash with the artworks, but the two works complement each other face to face, in the way music is capable of employing the carrying idea to these works, which speak about the arrangement and about the light which shines and is turned off but which is volatile from beginning to end, and the 12 canvases were able to contribute to this piece of music within a montage corresponding to it.
Despite the fact that the exhibition was successfully put on in Beirut, I was worried about you hanging the paintings in Khan As'ad Pasha. You said to me while you were hanging a large painting 'What am I getting into? And what's this I'm hanging in this place that just says to me: You and your work, get out of here!' Tell us about these feelings.
The work is born, and it lives and sleeps through its relationship with the space it exists within. I merely found the three works executed with a camera and which contained something built by the road which made them stand strongly by virtue of their composition in a constructed space which does not speak about work except in this way, and I felt that thy were built upon the example 'you came to the wrong place'. This made me afraid that my paintings will not be seen, and another feeling connected with adventure. Even if my paintings were not seen, they have a chance to stand up to the challenge of this place.