Faisal Samra: Distorted Reality III, sur une proposition de Marc Pottier

Galerie Nathalie Obadia is very pleased to organize the fourth solo exhibition in France of the artist Faisal Samra.
Born in 1956 in Bahrain, Faisal Samra is a Saudi national and a graduate of the ENSBA in Paris. In 1987 he became a consultant in art and graphic design at the Arab World Institute, then did research on design in Morocco in 1993-94. In 2004, he taught at the Fine Arts Department of the University of Amman in Jordan and obtained his first residency in Paris in 2005. He returned in 2008 to prepare the exhibition at the gallery.

Distorted Reality III is the title of his exhibition in Paris, the third in a series of performances that began two years ago. Faisal Samra paints, sculpts, draws, makes installations and photographs. While the medium may change, the essential thing is to show the strength of identity, of human memory through images that exude a great emotional and spiritual force. In the exhibited series Distorted Reality III, Faisal Samra, a single subject, expresses this psychological strength through images, self-portraits in different situations where the essence of his culture, his strength and his contradictions are staged. One thinks of Francis Bacon's paintings, Giacometti's sculptures which bring out this quest for human identity and its fragility. The animal, here, the lamb, is represented as symbolizing innocence, purity but it is also carried naked, distorted by a bride that shows all the anguish and complexity of cultural weight. The artist says that for him art is to expose the naked reality.

Several works represent Faisal Samra, covered with animal masks, fabrics or bandages that contort him until his face disappears. He moves in gnarled, complex postures that sometimes give him the appearance of suffocating. In all these works appears the uneasiness of the clash of traditions and the contemporary world and the difficulty to find one's place in it.
This oppressive atmosphere can be found in "Surviving I", a video installation that the artist will show for the first time at the gallery. "Surviving I" shows the staging (a bathtub filled with water) and the projection of a woman immersed in it.

Faisal Samra has participated in numerous group exhibitions around the world where his photographs and videos have received much attention.