ORDERED CHAOS

Ahmed Farid. Ordered Chaos For the ancient Greeks, the term “chaos” (cháos, χάος) did not mean “confusion,” “disorder,” or “the absence of rules,” as it does in contemporary usage, but rather it meant “openness,” or “to open wide”. From a purely etymological standpoint, “chaos” derives from chaínō (χαίνω) and cháskō (χάσκω), literally meaning “to be wide open” or “I open myself to something.” This physical disposition, which tends towards a precise direction, did not indicate an opening onto a pre-existing passage, but rather suggested a creation in the making: an opening that comes into being as a reality through the very act of turning towards it. For this reason, the concept was closely associated with the notion of new creation, with the germinal explosion of a space to be observed for the first time. It was Hesiod, the celebrated Greek poet who lived between the 8th and 7th centuries BC, who first spoke of Chaos in the Theogony, his poem concerning the birth and genealogy of the Gods. Chaos is an entirely undefined figure, barely personified, and bears little resemblance to the swirling mass of formless matter that we commonly imagine in art and beyond. Chaos opens, it is a chasm, an abyss that comes into being without knowing where it is going or from where it has emerged. Opposed to it is Gaia, the Earth, who comes into being in a similar manner and from whom all divine and mortal creatures descend. The absolute abyss described by Hesiod leads us naturally to the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who wrote in his celebrated 1886 work Beyond Good and Evil: “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.” I believe it is important to begin here, with the concepts of Chaos and the Abyss, in order to approach an understanding of Ahmed Farid’s artistic research. Over these two years of work, Farid has succeeded—as perhaps never before in his now twenty-year career—in presenting us with a chaotic representation of his personal abyss, in the ancient etymological sense of the term, while at the same time articulating a lucid vision of the collective abyss that contemporary society is compelled to contemplate, with increasingly dramatic consequences. Yet, as Nietzsche so precisely argued, the exploration of one’s darkest thoughts entails the risk of becoming lost within that darkness, within a shadowed space where everything is frayed and difficult to comprehend. The danger lies in not returning from this journey through the deepest layers of one’s own being, or in returning but profoundly changed, tragically conscious of truths that have remained unspoken for far too long. Whenever one has the privilege of standing before an artwork by Ahmed Farid and allowing the gaze to wander, becoming lost among the thick brushstrokes, luminous colours, and intricate interweavings of a gesture that seems to have released a primordial force, one is brought face to face with an abyss, motionless on the threshold of a discovery. Gradually, one perceives an opening towards deep fissures that possess the violence of an explosion, a world advancing towards us - a world whose characteristics we know, but which we often strategically choose not to look at. A gaze into an apparently disordered cosmos – the one described by Farid – a world in decline and, at the same time, a mirror in which we recognise all our anxieties, all our insecurities, all our inadequacies. Yet this is not pure abstraction. Farid belongs to that segment of art history which we historians have termed Informal Figurative Art: the branch of gestural abstraction that emerged after the end of the Second World War but never managed to completely sever its ties with the millennia-old tradition of figuration. Artists such as Jean Dubuffet, Willem de Kooning, Antonio Saura, and many others allowed, in their extraordinary creations, more or less recognisable figures to carve out a place for themselves—however marginal—within the dense network of nervous brushstrokes and impetuous gestures. European Informal Art, like its American counterpart, Abstract Expressionism, is characterised by broad fields of colour applied to the surface with force and urgency, within which drawing intervenes as an additional structure, making its way across the canvas violated by the artist’s action. At times, figures emerge resembling childish graffiti, as in Dubuffet’s works; at others, distant echoes of barely suggested women appear, as in de Kooning’s. These figurative episodes oppose the concept of “form” without necessarily being abstract. They are dilated silhouettes, sometimes barely hinted at, remnants of personifications that can no longer acquire concrete form, that can no longer present themselves in their entirety. They are vestiges of an artistic season that today can no longer claim the role of the sole sensitive gauge of reality. No longer sufficient, yet not quite ready to be definitively relinquished. As the art historian Pierluigi De Vecchi writes: “In Informal Art there may be recognisable or perceptible presences, but form is no longer there, nor is the depth of drawing; there are only indistinct appearances, deformed to the point of being unrecognisable, remnants of an ancient, irrepressible impulse towards representation, almost a habit inherited from the past.” The figures that emerge in Farid’s works presented in this exhibition likewise appear, at times, timidly, taking the form of silhouettes with an essential outline; on other occasions, they carve out a more prominent space upon the stage of the artwork. Yet they always assert themselves as remains, distant echoes of a world that no longer exists. These are beings crushed by an existence that has rendered them harmless, incapable of acting concretely within modern chaos. These drifting figures speak to us of a collective instability while simultaneously embodying the artist’s inner conflict. Returning once again to the etymological meaning of the term “chaos,” these works open themselves towards a reality in perpetual explosion. It is a reality that Farid has experienced over the past two years, scattered with pain, traumatic experiences, near and far voices, constantly calling for help. Without ever becoming didactic, and without seeking to assume the role of a megaphone, in his latest body of work the artist delineates a distorted world in which war is no longer the exception, but the rule. A terrible everyday reality that gradually gives way to habit, to the passive acceptance of an entirely earthly hell taking shape around us. It is a contemporary reality in which inequalities generated by politics and by an economy that has become increasingly ungovernable, carve out astronomical distances between a multitude of dispossessed people and a tiny percentage spared from horror. Environmental devastation, migrations of almost biblical proportions, arrivals upon inhospitable islands, and destructive earthquakes complete a terrifying picture. For these reasons, Farid’s work takes the form of a genuine cathartic release and, at the same time, a declaration of presence, a need to acknowledge his own vulnerability and his difficulty in finding equilibrium within an unrecognisable world. The only lifeline, the only refuge, the final ground to which one can appeal is art: a safe space in which to recover fragments of one’s lost self and, at the same time, a possibility of healing that can be shared with others. Farid follows this path by layering matter upon the support, scraping away brushstrokes, bringing different techniques into dialogue, and allowing space—as noted above—for frail and often barely recognisable forms of existence with a vaguely figurative quality, forms that call for and demand our attention. It is a gaze that begins within the artist’s own intimate sphere and attempts to bear witness to what is happening outside, while simultaneously recording the emotions provoked within his inner world by these external stimuli. The impact of colour upon the canvas is guided by a kind of controlled chance, directly influenced by the artist’s movement. Dense, at times dirty colours dance with solemn intensity, creating a whole in which one can become lost, and within which what the great novelist Henry Miller wrote about chaos finally seems to acquire greater clarity: “Confusion is a word we have invented for an order we do not understand.” Diego Faa

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