Source

Ismaïl Bahri, Source, 2016

Source


HD Video 
16/9 
Color
Stereo
00 : 8 : 00
2016


Produced by CNAP and Le GREC, Première image


Source shows the disappearance of a surface that consumes itself—an orginary sheet of paper devoured by a hole that grows from its center. Here, the experimental nature involves no special equipment or technical trickery; it is simply the phenomenon of combustion, observed in much the same way each of us did, fascinated, during childhood. At first, the white sheet is intact, then a tiny brown hole appears and immediately starts to widen, forming an almost perfect circle that eventually extends to the entire sheet. In a sense, if the sheet is the field, it is the field itself that eventually disappears. Although not sentimental, the emotion that comes with this inexorable erasure acts as an allegory for everything that fades away—of life—in general, and it is important to note that in this case, it is not just the sheet (the field) that disappears: what affects it, that small hole that widens and is surrounded by a thin red edge, exists as a form that continuously evolves and is itself, as soon as it comes into existence, on the verge of disappearing.

Jean-Christophe Bailly

Ismaïl Bahri, Source, Exhibition view, Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2017
2-Ismail-Bahri-source-2016.jpg
Ismaïl Bahri, Source, Video still, 2016