The François Schneider Fondation invites Abdelkader Benchamma to take over the 1200m2 of the art centre in Wattwiller. The artist proposes an exhibition conceived especially for the place, guided by the theme of water, which is dear to the Foundation. Around the theme of the flood, A. Benchamma questions this universal myth, the collective psyche that is attached to it and conceives a fragmented territory.
Between heaven and earth is water. Or rather, water is in the heavens, under and on the earth. Water has always nourished the founding myths of the different civilisations and great religions. According to the Koran, it is through water that God created and it is through water that he will raise the dead. Water is also one of the plagues of Egypt and the punishment of the Flood… In Genesis, on the second day, God separates the waters above and the waters below in order to create a dry land… a little later, wanting to come back on his creation, he releases the waters above to send a flood and punish the men… Water is here the chaos
Between science and belief, the Geology of Floods is a strange quest, which tracks down hypothetical shorelines throughout the world, traces that water would have left over the centuries, as possible witnesses of disasters, rising waters that would emerge from the depths as in this enigmatic extract from the Koran “and we made the earth gush forth into springs. “Or, on the contrary, from the heavens: “on that day all the springs of the immense abyss of water were split open and the sluices of the heavens were opened”.
For the past twenty years, Abdelkader Benchamma has been revisiting and investigating the origins of the universe in its morphological and symbolic components. He formalises his research and interest in the strata of the world by inscribing signs and reliefs on various surfaces. The artist infuses his ensembles with vibrations and rhythms. Mineral, vegetal and cosmic forms are revealed, which powerfully spill out into the spaces, heckling the viewer and taking the form of unstable worlds. We then cross the Foundation’s art centre like a fragmented territory that is as much geological as mythological. A cavern with tenebrous spurts and an aquatic atlas guide us towards a karst plain, it is erected on the edge of dried-up planets, comet tails flood the territory with extraterrestrial water. Through the prism of drawn sculptures, coloured incursions on paper, bi-chromatic lithographs and animations revealing trickling, tormented worlds with incessant flows, the artist composes a fantastic cartography where invasive drawing rubs shoulders with breathing. The layers of ink in his drawings are superimposed and slowly agglomerate, like the many sediments that shape the macrocosm.
A telluric world emerges, water and mineral cohabit.
Abdelkader Benchamma reveals his own images of these waters that flood the world and leave visible impacts, grooves on the rocks.
