K H A L E D D A W W A
T R Ô N E (S)
S O L O S H O W
Khaled Dawwa - Epave ( 2022), Bronze edition 8 + 4AP, H 45 x 31 x 30 CM - H 17 7/10 × 12 1/5 × 11 4/5 in
Power of the archetype
Khaled Dawwa or the evidence of meaning, in short. For this reason, which is at the same time eminent, obvious and didactic :
the use of the archetype, in this case that of the man on the throne.
A character on a throne, whatever the nature of this last one, modest Roman curule chair, badly polished wooden armchair of Charlemagne or chair with arms in majesty made of solid silver of Louis XIV, it is the personification of the power.
Is this concentration of authority in the same hand, the same body, the same sceptre legitimate or illegitimate? All depends on the election. The outrageous form in which the Syrian artist inscribes his figures of men sitting on thrones, in this respect, eliminates any hesitation: these have usurped power, they are illegitimate.
The archetype, for the occasion (the throne that comes to prolong the theme of obesity plus the stubborn character of the faces, the total absence of openness to others that they manifest), leaves no doubt, and allows the universality of the message: power, when it is confiscated, is a disease, a deviance, a perversion. A suffering too, for those who suffer it.
Ubu is funny in the theater, not in real life.
One of the oldest representations of the sovereign in action, the ancient standard of Ur, originating from the Middle East which is also the homeland of Khaled Dawwa, uses the figure of the sovereign on the throne to express power: for the occasion, along a frieze, that of a sovereign only a little taller, on this carved wood, than the characters who accompany him.
The staging of a tolerable leadership? One can think so.
Francis Bacon, for his part, mistreats in several of his paintings the Pope Innocent X such as Velázquez had frozen him, centuries earlier, on his pontifical throne. The religious leader as Bacon repaints him screams, prisoner of his chair of power, as if lost, abandoned by God perhaps. As if power and its detention, sometimes, could not save from everything. The fateful fate that awaits Khaled Dawwa's sculpted dictators? Let's hope so.
Paul Ardenne
Paul Ardenne (France, 1956) is a lecturer at the Université Picardie Jules-Verne in Amiens, a writer and an exhibition curator.
He is a member of AICA-France (International Association of Art Critics) and has been in particular a contributor to the journal Art press since 1990.
Khaled Dawwa - Sommeil Profond I, 2021 - Bronze edition of 8+ 4ap H 28 X 19 X 19 cm - H 11 × 7 1/2 × 7 1/2 in
The reduction of power to its lowest common denominator
Khaled Dawwa's men sitting on their throne are more than just sculptures - the expression, in this case, of an obsession. Their figure is recurrent, endlessly repeated by the artist, reiterated as it is in multiple formats (from the bronze statuette to the monumental mineral statue). The artist, as if seized by the "monster", makes the portrait without end, at the same time meditated, hypnotized and dependent. Enslaved to the figure of the abusive master, therefore.
But not without defense, however.
Let's take a closer look at each sculpture.
Khaled Dawwa does not present his seated tyrants to their advantage, first of all: pigs, fats, symbols of gluttonous and unjustifiable greed. He prints on their flesh, sculpted with a knife, acts of violence (of self-defense?): everywhere holes, holes, holes in the sculpted material, in the image of a relentlessness, of a will to pierce the epidermis, to kill perhaps, in a mode of revenge and an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, as the Bible says. Another not necessarily friendly intention of the artist towards his models of stone, earth or bronze: their constrained position. Impossible for them, it would seem, to move. They have the throne, of course, but do they use it? Prisoners of their office, condemned to cling to what is not even the sign of their legitimacy, this throne ill-fitting for them, as if usurped, where they have installed a policy that is also ill-fitting, incongruent with the expectations of beings of peace, goodness, freedom and democracy. I do not share, says the man on the throne as Khaled Dawwa, I am there I stay there.
To which the artist responds, through his style deceptively passive but actually incisive: "You are there, you stay there but will you always be there? Where you are, man of illegitimate power, are you well?
Text by Paul Ardenne //
Khaled Dawwa
The Game of (Precarious) Thrones
Khaled Dawwa has made a name for himself, especially with his sculptures of men sitting on thrones. Unappealing-looking males, usually fat, bloated, misshapen and square on chairs that seem too small for them - these pieces of furniture invariably struggle to contain their dripping mass of flesh.
Portraits of overpowering and greedy men, of political dictators? Everyone will see who they want, but nothing to do with the sympathetic Bacchus of the Boboli garden in Florence, with its benevolent obesity and free movement.
The artist makes no secret of it, his sculptures evoke tyranny, notoriously when the tyrant, authoritatively arrogating full powers to himself, oversteps his legal limits to the point of hypertrophy.
Arrived in France in 2014 by the roads of exile (his studio is now in Vanves, near Paris), Khaled Dawwa does not privilege aesthetic hyperbole without reason.
He has experienced firsthand the rigors of war and the violence of the dictatorship of Bashar El Assad. Implacable with his political enemies (we are then at the beginning of the Arab Spring), harshly repressed in Syria by the leader in place, this iron regime will earn him several weeks in prison in an overcrowded cell where sitting, precisely, is impossible: the privilege of the wealthy, the well-placed, or the lucky.
Khaled Dawwa - Debout (detail) , 2018, Bronze edition 8 + 4ap - H 30,5 x 28 x 24 cm - H 11 4/5 x 9 2/5 x 11 in
View of Khaled Dawwa's solo show "Trône(s)"