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| Tahar Ben Jelloun Art Review: The Roots of Time |
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| Tuesday, 15 December 2009 | |||||||
 Melehi has new resources at his disposal: unexpected advances in the world of the imagination take him away from his traditional technique in order for him to dare to venture into other areas, more flexible, more dreamlike and also erotic. Melehi dares to lose himself. He comes out of the shadow. He paints waves differently, in a more emotional way – they are subtler and even more off-the-wall. He scarcely indicates erosion. A crack now takes the place of so many perfect lines. Such is the female body in fantasies. The work of Melehi is a superb parable of duration and desire. For a long time now, his hand and his gaze have been full of a fine fervour: the living colours worn by migratory birds, by the memories of childhood that dwell persistently and naturally in him. I remember a small canvas painted while he was still a child; it was hanging in the living room of his parents’ house in Asilah. It shows a seascape, the one he could see from his window. In the background the sea is not placid and calm but promises movements that are intriguing. This painting is the point of departure for Melehi’s work who, even after having gone through the fashion for Italian plastic art of the 60s, has renewed his acquaintance with this childhood memory. Today, for the sake of consistency, we are witnesses to his going back to his origins, to one or two daring manoeuvres that delight us. Whereas Melehi in a certain way undresses the female body, Talal dresses it up unusually and puts it on stage as if life was a theatrical comedy. He doesn’t just paint merely figurative portraits, but mixes them up and loads them down as if all these women were hiding their faces behind the colourfulness and outrageous hats. Talal lets us see the mask of the face at rest, adding to the portrait the fantasy of mockery and the human gaze. Between the two painters there is a distance with, nevertheless, a way of working that makes them come together. Talal gets hold of a portrait and makes of it a dancing partner. The ballroom we are to imagine is a stage prop. Reality is not the most important thing. These faces are covered, veiled by music. Melehi invites us to visit the world of his dreams. Bodies are shapes sketched circumspectly. He leaves our gaze free to imagine things. Each has resisted the influences and fashions which have flooded the Morocco art scene. They have stayed true to themselves and have not been swamped by the commercial free-for-all made up of mimicry and a certain conformism. Talal has gradually been able to get away from the dominant and grandiose shadow of his mother, Chaibia. He has discretely maintained his themes while still concerning himself with those that have overwhelmed the gaze directed at Moroccan artists and which had a connection with the Cobra group. In a way this exhibition poses the problem of looking at modern art in Morocco. Two visions of the world co-exist alongside each other and yet both tend in the same direction: two ‘resistance’ artists, though this adjective has to be taken with a pinch of salt. Inheritors of the Western pictorial tradition, they have taken on board this choice and responded to it with quiet strength. The burgeoning of so many painters in Morocco is an excellent thing. But, as everywhere in this type of emerging art, there are those who forge works of art and those who build a career based on the most heinous aspect of art: money. The Moroccan art scene is in the process of making a place for itself in the new cultural traditions. Given time good values will triumph over those others that make much ado about nothing. It is in this sense that this exhibition of two painters of the same generation comes just in time to remind the general public that the ease with which works of art become rooted in time is their chief characteristic. Tahar Ben Jelloun: Morocco Newsline
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