Adel Abdessemed
Adel Abdessemed was born 1971 in Constantine, Algeria. He is a conceptual artist who now lives and works in Paris. Abdessemed attended the École des Beaux-Arts in Algiers, Algeria from 1987 to 1994. Due to political unrest in Algeria, he moved to Lyon, France in 1994. He continued his fine arts education at the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, before completing his studies in Paris, France in 2000. The following year, he enrolled at the International Studio Program at the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York.
Abdessemed transforms everyday materials and images into unexpected, charged, and sometimes shocking artistic declarations. He pulls from a plethora of sources- personal, social, and political- to create a visual language that is simultaneously rich and economical, sensitive and controversial, radical and mundane. Many situations created by Abdessemed are based on singular and deliberate actions, or, as he calls them, acts, which are testified, more than documented, with videos and photographs, and are often later juxtaposed with a sculptural remainder from the action itself.
Adel Abdessemed was born 1971 in Constantine, Algeria. He is a conceptual artist who now lives and works in Paris. Abdessemed attended the École des Beaux-Arts in Algiers, Algeria from 1987 to 1994. Due to political unrest in Algeria, he moved to Lyon, France in 1994. He continued his fine arts education at the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, before completing his studies in Paris, France in 2000. The following year, he enrolled at the International Studio Program at the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York.
Abdessemed transforms everyday materials and images into unexpected, charged, and sometimes shocking artistic declarations. He pulls from a plethora of sources- personal, social, and political- to create a visual language that is simultaneously rich and economical, sensitive and controversial, radical and mundane. Many situations created by Abdessemed are based on singular and deliberate actions, or, as he calls them, acts, which are testified, more than documented, with videos and photographs, and are often later juxtaposed with a sculptural remainder from the action itself.
Abdessemed is an example of a contemporary conceptual artist. For more than a century, artists have given up on idealization, the dominant aesthetic vision at least since the Renaissance. Instead of showing us what we could be, artists have reflected back to us an imperfect image of who we are and the world in which we live. This shifting attitude has resulted in a variety of artwork that is troubling, ugly and rooted in the baser instincts of human nature. Abdessemed shows us a new side of art, he takes us into a new realm of the art world that seems to be more and more commonplace these days.
It kinda scares me a little bit to be honest.
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