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A Conversation with Massinissa Selmani on the Occasion of his Participation in the 2019 Armory Show, by James Scarborough

Below is an interview with Algerian artist, Massinissa Selmani. Along with Tunisia artist Nidhal Chamekh, his work was shown at the recent Armory Show in New York. He's represented by the Selma Feriani Gallery

JS: Growing up in Algiers, who or what were your early artistic influences? Are they the same as today?

MS: My first influences come from Algerian painters such as M'hamed Issiakhem, Mohammed Temmam or Baya, but also cartoonists such as Ali Dilem or Slim.

As a teenager, I went to a drawing workshop in Tizi-ouzou (a city east of Algiers) where I discovered Impressionist painting and French cartoonist and painter Honoré Daumier, who remains a major influence today. I can also quote Saul Steinberg, Tacita Dean, and many others.

JS: At school you studied art as well as Computer Science. What made you decide to focus on art? What effect might your study of Computer Science have had on your work? I ask because your work reminds me of computer simulations. People void of context placed in dynamic if enigmatic circumstances to gauge how they respond to or behave with other dispossessed people in similar circumstances.

MS: I have always wanted art studies. I first had to study computer science in order to have a "real diploma" and reassure my parents.

I do not know if my computer studies have any influence on my work, I have always drawn, and my work is nourished mainly by my experience and experiences related to drawing.

JS: What attracts you to paper and pencil and not, say, painting? Is it a matter of materiality? Are there things you can express with the medium that you can’t say with other media?

MS: I like the lightness of drawing that I see as something dynamic and direct.

I made some attempts to paint, but it is logic of work all different that for the moment does not suit my way of working. But I do not exclude to try again if the need is felt.

JS: A follow up. Your work looks ephemeral, almost spectral-like. In it, though, you deal with profound if enigmatic topics. Might this be a comment on - or response to - the ephemerality and blather of social media?

MS: I have always wanted to make works of art with the minimum of means and the lightest possible. The drawing offers this possibility and I try to explore it. The subjects that feed my works come from newspaper clippings and social, political or historical news events that have a particular resonance with the present.

I never conceived my work as a media critic, I cannot say that I had this ambition.

JS: Another follow up. In a prior conversation, you expressed an interest in press photography. In terms of cropping and your use of white space, how does your manipulation and decontextualization of these images distance you - and the viewer - from the events they depict? Does your use of all that white space act as a buffer that mediates between the events the images represent and our response to them?

MS: I’m interested in photojournalism. I regularly collect newspapers from different countries and spend a lot of time observing how these photographs are staged in each newspaper.

In my drawings, I take characters and elements from different press photographs that are unrelated to each other. I then compose scenes that are unlikely to occur in large white spaces. Each element is taken from a context that meets other contexts. This white space is for me the meeting of all these heteroclite contexts that end up canceling each other to create a new one, strange and enigmatic.

In these drawings, the background is often marked by violence, but is not immediately visible because this violence is defused by strange or absurd scenes that come to scramble the reading and create the setting at a distance.

JS: In particular terms of distancing, let’s discuss Untitled No.V., 2019, a piece from your No Plan is Foolproof series. 7 people. An ostrich. A structure - or else a fragment of a structure. And a minivan. 6 of the people work with dispassionate and unconnected purpose on some physical task, be in digging a hole or raking. It’s as if they were suddenly cut-and-pasted from elsewhere to an unfamiliar space void of references, landmarks, and signs. As in a computer simulation. Off to the right, a single, almost grayed-out figure does nothing but observe. Might this person serve as an existential voyeur who embodies both our immediate response to what we see or read and our subsequent reflection to what we see and read? Might this person be you? I noticed the same disinterested grayed-out figure in Relevé du Dehors No.V. from your Relevés du Dehors series.

MS: I never have a clear idea when I compose my drawings and I am aware that, often, the interpretation that is made by the spectator escapes me. All my work is made of absences that must be filled with his own references or knowledge. It is for this reason that I never give indications of place and that there are no known faces among the protagonists of the mises en scènes that I create. Everything depends on the low profitability that these situations occur. I am fascinated by surrealist photography, especially by Paul Nougé's work. I have a real attraction for strange scenes where reading can be done by ellipse.

As for these characters just sketched, they are part of the scenes and they must be taken as such, each to make his own interpretation.

JS: There’s a sense of Sisphyean gravitas and humor in your work. The people you portray are monumentally committed to whatever menial task with which they’re engaged. And yet, without any clue as to what is going on in the work, we see their efforts are comical, if not absurd. Is that a fair assessment?

MS: The confrontation between comic and tragic is a very important part of my work. I grew up like that and it comes also from my readings, especially from some Algerian writers.

JS: What are you working on now?

MS: I am working on my next personal exhibition at the CCCOD in Tours (France) and on new works focusing on drawing as a form of documentary and some absurd animations.

 

No Plan is Foolproof series.

Untitled No.V. 2019, graphite and color pencil on paper, 90h x 135w cm. From the No Plan is Foolproof series.

Relevé du Dehors No.V. 2013. Graphite on recycled paper. 21hx29.7w cm. Unique. Relevés du Dehors series

Relevé du Dehors No.V., 2013, graphite on recycled paper, 21h x29.7 w cm. Unique. From the Relevés du Dehors series.

Soon No.VII. 2016. Graphite  colored pencil on paper & tracing paper. 79h x 105w cm. Unique. Soon series

Soon No.VII. 2016, graphite, colored pencil on paper & tracing paper, 79h x 105w cm. Unique. From the Soon series.

Soon No.VIII. 2016. Graphite  color pencil on paper & trancing paper. 79h x 105w cm. Unique. Soon series

Soon No.VIII. 2016, graphite, color pencil on paper & trancing paper, 79h x 105w cm. Unique. From the Soon series.

Untitled No.VI. 2019. Graphite and color pencil on paper. 56.5hx75.9w cm. Unique. No Plan Is Foolproof series

Untitled No.VI. 2019. Graphite and color pencil on paper. 56.5h x 75.9w cm. Unique. From the No Plan Is Foolproof series.

Dans Quel Sens Traverser Les Antipodes?. 2018. Mixed media installation. Variable dimensions. Palais de Tokyo Installation view

Dans Quel Sens Traverser Les Antipodes?, 2018, mixed media installation. Variable dimensions. Palais de Tokyo Installation view.