Project Description

Youssef Abdelké is an internationally acclaimed printmaker and artist. Both
his etchings and charcoal drawings are carvings of light from within darkness,
representations of silence. While the charcoal still lives depict a commonplace
object, the point is “the emotion the object generates from narrating its lived
experience, and the starkly cast grey shadows prevail to best serve their expression”,
to cite the artist’s own words. The objects are staged, even though their mise-en-scène
is minimal, they trap the light and mirror the artist’s subjectivity. By contrast, his
etchings invariably feature three characters, embodying oppression, suffering and
insurgency in variations of compositional possibilities.

Presented by Atassi Gallery, Damascus, Syria

April 2011