J. GHORAYEB
We know that Levi-Strauss was not a fan of contemporary art. However, if he were to be placed in front of a Ghorayeb painting, one wonders if a sudden enthusiasm might not change his mind. Under chaotic, well assumed gestures, the traces of Negro art and Neolithic painting rise up from a cavernous memory. Though it would be easy to reduce the work of Ghorayeb to a simple juxtaposition of these ancestral influences, action painting, abstract expressionism and art brut, it would be a mistake to do so. It is more accurate to speak of appropriation, revitalization and synthesis; actualizing languages that would otherwise lose their meaning were it not for this artist's enabling of them in fresh, new ways. |