Constructing Illusion

By Mounir Fatmi

"For his fourth solo exhibition at the Analix Forever gallery in Geneva, Mounir Fatmi explores this time the question of illusion.
In February 2015, fatmi, in Permanent Exiles, presented at MAMCO (Geneva) a work entitled Constructing Illusion (2015): a steel sculpture with a system of mirrors such as those used by medical researchers interested in the analysis and treatment of the "phantom limb". This phenomenon refers to the persistent sensation of the presence of a limb after it has been amputated: the brain "remembers" and recreates the non-existent limb. Visitors to the exhibition can test their own perceptions by inserting one of their arms into the mirror sculpture.
The name of this sculpture then became the title of the Analix Forever exhibition: Constructing Illusion. Fatmi expands the concept of the brain as a factory for physical illusions to that of a factory for multiple illusions, in particular religious ones, and explores these illusions with absolute aesthetic rigor.
The experience of the lost limb, the phantom limb and then the reconstituted limb, multiplied by the mirror and by elegant photographs, both concrete and allusive. The illusion becomes reality.
Another fundamental emotion in mounir fatmi’s work: that of the link. The link, often represented by cables. Cables that should allow us to communicate but that are, in Fatmi's works, most often found, such as the “cultural umbilical cord”, fragmented. The question then is that of recreating these links, a process on which Fatmi is constantly working, not without warning us: what claims to be a link, when it is not love, can become a cord, and can enclose, separate, threaten, exclude. Who needs a God Triangle? fatmi asks us with two bas-relief paintings.
Two videos complete the exhibition: The Silence of Saint Peter Martyr (2011) and Architecture Now (2010). The first creates a trap for the viewer, because the beauty of Fatmi's images fascinates. But they are also illusions, while the criticism of the idea that faith justifies the torture of non-believers is also perceived and above all heard, even though the Saint orders us to remain silent. The second, Architecture Now, shows the systematic destruction of unwelcome buildings and leaves us stunned by the phantasmagoria of architectural phantom limbs that resemble now, too, illusions from the past."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mounir Fatmi
• Release date: Nov 1, 2021

Mounir Fatmi

mounir fatmi is a visual artist born in Tangier, Morocco in 1970. He constructs visual spaces and linguistic games. His work deals with the desecration of religious objects, deconstruction, and the end of dogmas and ideologies. He questions the world and plays with its codes and precepts under the prism of architecture, language and the machine. He is particularly interested in the idea of the role of the artist in a society in crisis. mounir fatmi's work offers a look at the world from a different glance, refusing to be blinded by convention. He brings to light our doubts, fears and desires.He has published several books and art catalogs including: The Kissing Precise, with Régis Durand, La Muette edition, Brussels, 2013, Suspect Language, with Lillian Davies, Skira edition, Italy, 2012, This is not blasphemy, in collaboration with Ariel Kyrou, Inculte-Dernier Marge & Actes Sud edition, 2015, History is not Mine, SF Publishing, Paris, 2015, and Survival Signs, SF Publishing, Paris, 2017. He has also participated in the collective book, Letter to a young Moroccan, edition Seuil, Paris, 2009.He has participated in several solo and collective exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world including: Mamco, Geneva, The Picasso Museum, Vallauris, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, The Brooklyn Museum, New York, N.B.K., Berlin, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, MAXXI, Rome, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Moscow, Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, the Hayward Gallery, London, the Art Gallery of Western Australia, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven.His installations have been selected in biennials such as the 52nd and the 57th Venice Biennial, the 8th biennial of Sharjah, the 5th Dakar Biennial, the 2nd Seville Biennial, the 5th Gwangju Biennial and the 10th Lyon Biennial, the 5th Auckland Triennial, Fotofest 2014, Houston, the 10th and 11th Bamako Encounters, as well as the 7th Biennale of Architecture in Shenzhen.mounir fatmi was awarded several prizes such as the Cairo Biennial Prize in 2010, the Uriöt prize, Amsterdam, the Grand Prize Leopold Sedar Senghor of the 7th Dakar Biennial in 2006 as well and he was shortlisted for the Jameel Prize of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London in 2013.

Book preview

CONSTRUCTING ILLUSION

mounir fatmi

CONSTRUCTING ILLUSION

mounir fatmi

This publication was made on the occasion of the solo exhibition Constructing Illusion at the gallery Analix Forever in Geneva, Switzerland, by moroccan artist mounir fatmi, from April 21 st to June 21 st, 2015.

Curator: Barbara Polla

© 2021 mounir fatmi

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

Published by: mounir fatmi

Cover Design: Studio Fatmi

Cover Photography: mounir fatmi

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