Catching the memory... An attempt

By Ali Najjar *

Amir Khatib implements his artworks by a clear meaning; his artworks are a mixture of an unforgettable memory, a gaining of knowledge and a mixture of variable context.
To some odd extant he lived this mixture in depth, towards understanding, and then he tried to survive, sometimes in parallel line and some other times by integrating himself in fervouring its variable details, we can possibly assume saying: he is the symbol an exiled person.

Like people of his generation, he went around many Asian and European countries, carrying some of these knowledge and its environmental influences, and out of these all, his works came to existence, although they are not far from his memory of his childhood. The first childhood memory in its epical dreams and its environmental context.

Space involvement was his favourite place, not randomly, but it is sort of a wider belonging. It is a suggested solution to the exile problem in its continues problem...penetration and release, quietness and explosion, clearness and unknown, it is huge hole which dose not give us its secretes easily and spontaneously.

Towards catching this difficult equivalent, he tried limiting his assumed space by creating a space and working on discourse with it by his own special tools.

Some of Amir's first arising; there is this riddle of his interest to research of the space. Amir was born and grew up until his Youngwood in a strange city, Al-Najaf Al-Ashraf; it is a strange city in every aspect, in its environment, its diversity of cultures and its economy. It is the world famous cultural and religious centre, with an opened horizon. This city gave birth to one of the most important science in the linguistics field; it is the language logic, which is a part of anthropological studies. This was during the 12th century, and during its history the city experienced modernism as well.

Because it is surrounded by sand, Al-Najaf Al-Ashraf built its economy and trade on the shape of the nature. These issues put its influence on the city's people by primitive cultural behaviour and by scientific, pragmatic and civilized behaviour too.

All of us know what is the first influence on the characters of the mankind, this, it is the environmental genes. Later; these first genes composed the space life project of Amir. So, there is no clearer, no purer sky, but only, his own first sky, this sky, which is of the spacious desert.

He enacts his sky by boxes or structure shapes, as the water or the gas would act, but the difference here is that Amir plying cleverly on philosophical indications. The matter on some of its elements show indicates the fist womb of ours, the wide space womb. Here we can find that Amir is trying to enter this womb through its suggested hole to return to his childhood (as it is clear from the location of the hole or the gap he puts in his art objects).

A lifetime he spent uselessly trying to go deeper in its depth. He is like a poet, who doses not try to rationalize his dreams by his artistic tools. While his scientific sense try rationalizing this dream by artificial tools that it is mixed of primitive construction material and artistic material.

Amir's artworks, the constructions ones (his boxes) or his pillars always trying to combine the earth chemistry and the space elements or its echo, it is a rich earth of its verity, one can see the golden sand of the desert pouring on the surface of Amir's artwork, and sometimes some borrowed from some other continents.

What ever he adds or builds, it returns us to its first arising, so that his artworks are harmonized with its first elements. What he lost of his normal life time goes through a hidden door leading to the surface of the lost time, different kind of toys spread on the surface, indications, symbols or notices which lived inside him for a long time, these all find themselves or find what is lost in a new wide quantity backing the taboo of the lost time.

Sex, (male, female) is a theme which exists in Amir's works; there is always a penetration, a lustful vertical hole, and an invitation for penetration. There is a crowd precipitating in the space. In the darkness of the inside and designing the outside surface, there are several tendencies, the differences between the oriental mystic (Sophie) erotic poem, and the pragmatic (Duniawi) erotic are little, if it is not the same.

I find these art works (boxes) as art objects, quarrelling objects by its primitive martial which the artists implemented, sometimes it is sharp, some other times acceptable like any piece of decoration, but because it is meant to be art, we have to take it as it is, to put it in its place and include it in our architectural environment. And the last attempt of Amir to cross the limited space, Amir made a complete edifice. Temple perhaps he collects all of his techniques and his old visions to create this "suggested temple" of STOA.

The artist here dose not stop in front of the empty distance, which he worked on previously, because as he was conscious that the distance cannot be completed unless one creates a wider space. The limitless emptiness of the space that comes through other suggested hole that can be a door to the universal space.

Amir tries to follow the dream of the old Arab astrologists on their research in the seas. It is possible to read his artwork STOA as tunnel or aperture to the space. He built this temple clearly out of what his skills and techniques. The pillars, which are made of different martial showing two sides; the delicateness and the toughness, by adding, carefully, the colour and the mirrors. As they are long pillars like plants pushing up to the high by its concaves and prominences.

He completed its empty space square, by a hypothetical ceiling, which is an item of his former artwork; he put it in a clever way to serve his general idea. The artist puts his spacey bag as an alternative ceiling to the space dome, or the temple dome, which is a hole, or a sky ceiling. By spreading his own things (one can say his own symbols) to an adequate high.

This artwork of STOA played a dual role. It is an earthy temple, by what it indicates of a clear architecture and the broken mirror on it, they are fragments of mankind faces, so that mirrors are important elements of the demounting oriental temple architect. So the magical endless reflexes of the light compose a link of many orientalization links.

He plays on the physical space and the telepathy space as well. As much as the space touches the surroundings of the pillars they keep the relatively limit of freedom to keep their independence as separate parts.

This fastened axel finds its outlet in the ceiling hole to response with the huge outside space, and the colour of the pillars lead us to think about the michaniqual cement civilization and dedicates the work strongly in its contrasts (the heritage and modernism) this contrast or this composition is a part of the contemporary message.

Last but not least I find that Amir could successfully combine several environmental influences, Nordic and southern in all what he used; his colours, his material and his using to the theme. In other word one can say that Amir has turned his personal carrier to a carrier of a wide rang artworks, which is not far from similar masters experiences, which try to read what is happening on the map of the cultural life of the world by a variety of tools.

Ali Najjar Sweden, /23.10.2003/

* Ali is an Iraqi artist and art critic who started his carrier in the sixties of the last century, and who is considered as one of those who renewed the Iraqi art movement
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