Ismaïl Bahri www.ismailbahri.com

Orientations 2010 Video, 20 minutes, hdv, 16/9.

Color and sound. Ismaïl Bahri

The video Orientations is made of a sequence shot filmed by a subjective camera that recounts a wandering in the city of Tunis. The off-screen reflected in a glass filled with ink is used as a compass and an illusory float with a funambulistic progression. In this very simple optical device, the appearance of city fragments gives directions and stretches the horizon. The video shows a walk of short-sightedness and a gathering of images on the horizon of the overflowing and distraction of senses.

Orientations 2010 Video, 20 minutes, hdv, 16/9. Color and sound. Ismaïl Bahri

Orientations 2010 Video, 20 minutes, hdv, 16/9. Color and sound. Ismaïl Bahri

Latency and Foams, 2009 - 2010 Milk on paper and glass, 24 x 18 cm

Ismail Bahri Fomas is a series of drawings made with milk. These drawings are of organic nature. They are made of the interweaving of transparent bubbles : milky foams. Sometimes this matter coagulates in shiny small strips, which, become soaked with dust by drying in the air. Dusts and scorias settle there and “sow” the slimline of milk.

Latency , 2009 - 2010 Milk on glass, 24 x 18 cm Ismail Bahri

Latency , 2009 - 2010 Milk on glass, 24 x 18 cm Ismail Bahri

Latency , 2009 - 2010 Milk on glass, 24 x 18 cm Ismail Bahri

Latency , 2009 - 2010 Milk on glass, 24 x 18 cm Ismail Bahri

Foam , 2009 - 2010 Milk on paper, 24 x 18 cm Ismail Bahri

Foam , 2009 - 2010 Milk on paper, 24 x 18 cm Ismail Bahri

Foam , 2009 - 2010 Milk on paper, 24 x 18 cm Ismail Bahri

Foam , 2009 - 2010 Milk on paper, 24 x 18 cm Ismail Bahri

Foam , 2009 - 2010 Milk on paper, 24 x 18 cm Ismail Bahri

Sang d’encre 2009 Photographic series, 40 x 40 cm

Ismaïl Bahri The wirnkles of the skin form lines and tiny networks that make their profound and subtle lineaments appear when they are watered with ink. In Sang d’encre, I drop ink in the pores with a nib and draw as if I was sowing. The layout appears by capillarity and requires a subtle dosage: by small doses, the ink infiltrates the pores to form small networks, a swarming halo suggesting organic or celestial landscapes. When the drawing is done, I take a picture of it. Sang d’encre evokes a caress by the contact of the nib on the skin and the closer look on these bodies. The people pictured are my parents, who become ephemeral supports for my drawings, models at which I gaze tenderly. But in the series, the caressing is tainted with a « worrying strangeness » (‘‘Inquiétante étrangeté’’). The act of drawing hesitates between caress and sting, insemination and contamination, sweetness and pain. The dissemination of the ink suggests the nightfall. Its crack makes visible the progressive.

Sang d’encre 2009 Photographic series, 40 x 40 cm Ismaïl Bahri

Sang d’encre 2009 Photographic series, 40 x 40 cm. Ismaïl Bahri

Sang d’encre 2009 Photographic series, couleur, 40 x 40 cm. Ismaïl Bahri

Sang d’encre 2009 Photographic series, couleur, 40 x 40 cm. Ismaïl Bahri

Résonances 2008 Video, 7 minutes, 16/9

Color and sound. Ismaïl Bahri

Resonances starts with the prospecting of the bathroom from my childhood. Black inked words written in Arabic on the bathtub surface scatter and propagate progressively. They resonate and echo night scene recollections. Transformed in a resonance chamber, the bathtub mixes the fluids of these evanescent thoughts. By reflecting its surroundings, the ink blurred water surface, overturns and clouds the words. The backward surge of the night reveals the scars of a troubled universe, verging on obliteration.

Résonances 2008, Vidéo, 7 minutes, dv, 16/9. Color and sound. Ismaïl Bahri

Résonances 2008, video, 7 minutes, dv, 16/9. Coulor and son. Ismaïl Bahri

Ghost line 2007 Photograhic series

Ismaïl Bahri The ghost line is a thin film on the edge of extinction. It is the blocked out plotting made of the shadow put on the pins planted in the wall. The shadow of every pin, obtained in the sunlight, is extended at its extremity by the shadow of another pin. Each pin and their shadow form modules that gather and articulate like pieces of a lego.

Ghost line 2007 Photograhic series Ismaïl Bahri

Coulée douce 2007 Installation

Water, wood ad threads Ismaïl Bahri

Coulée douce is a device of ephemeral and resounding decanting of water: containers arranged on the floor fill up when the others empty out from a height. By a slow drip-drip, the drops progress along the threads. Depending on whether they are tight, loose, unwound, curved or straight, the threads produce vibrations of variable amplitude under the weight of the drops. Worn out, the water falls into the containers and makes sound.

Coulée douce 2007 Installation Water, wood and threads Ismaïl Bahri