Mohammed Kazem: Receiving and Collecting

“Receiving and Collecting” is the title of the solo exhibition featuring new works by the artist Mohammed Kazem on view at Gallery Isabelle Van Den Eynde from January to February 2017.

Born in Dubai (1969), where he currently lives and works, Mohammed Kazem has developed an artistic practice that encompasses video, photography and performance, always dealing with environment and experiences, trying to find artistic ways to render transient phenomena.

In his new body of works presented in “Receiving and Collecting”, Kazem’s aim is to capture the uncapturable: observations, mostly abstract, of nature, that take form throughout the artistic practice. What is apparently unvisible or untangible, becomes material in the form of scratchings, paintings, drawings and sculpture.

In this way immaterial things that surround us in our everyday life, as sound or light, become visual works as the result of an accurate examination of the environment to recollect visual and sensorial experiences.

Some of the works presented in “Receiving and Collecting” literally depicts the actual work of the artist’s research during the production, making visible his hands in the act of collecting the non-collectable. Cornerstone of the exhibition is not only the artwork itself, but the same act of its creation. The performance of the artistic work becomes itself an immaterial element made material by its result.

This concept lays behind all the works featured in the exhibition: the artist sees, than uses action to make the experience visible.

In the production of “Receiving Light” (2016), Kazem waits patiently the encounter with the sunlight, capturing the moment in a photograph hallmarked by scratches to make tangible the light intensity.

Conversely, in “Collecting Light” (2016) the artist follows the light’s direction striking on objects, scratching the photographic surface to remark the trajectory.