Faris Dajani

Lives and works in Amman, Jordan

Artist statement

“Image” is more adjective than noun. The term itself is tenuous, its root “imago” once pointed to likeness and included sculptures. With the victory of the camera and technologies of mass reproduction, the total weight of all we call an image decreased (granite-canvas-paper-pixel). It favoured that which we could enter over that which we step around. This is the central axiom that my practice orbits. An axiom that comes at a time when livestreamed destruction and artificial intelligence have hollowed out the image's contents into hypersaturated indiscernibility. We are left only with its form, and a duty to interrogate it. In an attempt to answer these questions, I write and make videos and installations, but mostly I paint. I paint because every painting starts as an object and, given enough decisions, may end up affirming or negating its objecthood. Using render-favouring materials (acrylic, oil, charcoal) and object-favouring materials (clay, joint compound, wood, the wall) allows for instances in which both polarities can be pulled into tension. Layering paint in translucent glazes builds an illusory ground, which with enough accumulation comes to the fore in a proud impasto that says: I am just paint. Feeding canvas into the wall, feathered with mesh tape and joint compound until the edge disappears, works in reverse. Frozen moments of sublation, where material, object or the artist's hand disappears into a spacious pictorial mist, or the reverse.

Artwork