Viktor El-Saieh. KONBIT

April 25th-May 30th 2020.

Deye Mon, Gen Mon (Beyond Mountains, There are Mountains)

Deye Konbit, Gen Konbit(Beyond Konbit, There is Konbit) 

In Viktor El-Saieh’s third solo presentation at the gallery, issues of collaborative enterprise encounter conflict, the cancer of hope, and the complexity of systems. His practice is set in reformulating a way of addressing painting as a means of understanding time and life, through the very system (Painting) that holds within all sorts of emergences and collapses. El-Saieh’s stylized figurative works bring to mind naïve art, Haitian painting, the concept of the dragon vein[I] in Chinese landscape compositions; among many other associations. And as the artist mentions: “Beyond collaboration,there is collaboration”. Beyond voices there are legions. 

Konbit -the title of this presentation- can be understood, conceptually, as acollaborative enterprise. "A thing which can only be done collectively. A phenomenon which proposes the idea that the individual is both necessary and invisible. In this same vein, my work can be understood as the product of a decades long conversation which is both generational in scope, and collaborative in its approach". 

Konbit, in this show, is also related-at least phonetically- to combat…which is a collaboration of sorts, a tension, something that is defined by violence. These paintings then, are not utopic representations, but rather, seem packed with conflicting decisions: Animals anthropomorphized, religion and industry represented together; or labor...And people vacationing next to a waterfall (that actually is located in Haiti where ceremonies, historically take place) while a soldier moves forward against a purple-black lion with shoes…Collaboration, ritual, association, its beauty, its promise, its taboo, and its violence. 

In some of the paintings shown, a grid, which can be thought of as a chess board, appears as a background, a foreground, and a pattern. In fact, El-Saieh points out: "The gridded tiles of the bottom floor studio of Galerie Issa in Port-Au-Prince is the default setting of my practice and finds its way into my work often. It’s the starting point from which I lived, (within the shade of a collective enterprise) and the basis of my bias in favor of an arrangement which is collective in nature.”

Many of these paintings show Viktor El-Saieh’s experience as a Haitian immigrant, a worker, a community organizer, a teacher, or a farmer, etc. They are Informed by Viktor’s "Coming of age in the era of globalization, where the internet offers individuals the opportunity to be in many places simultaneously (while being nowhere at the same time)".

Animals behaving like humans, painted words that look like corporate brands/signs, bathers diving into waterfalls where religious practices take place…These works seem to consider the notion of integration while representing boundary issues. There are landscapes that function as portraits of a state of being; where religion and regenerative agricultural practices are accomplices; while planting the magical as a way of escaping the traumatic. All this brings us to the notion of conflict, "and the extent to which the forces of conflict guide historical events and the way we think about them." 

In the chaos and harmony where clouds blow minds, we encounter a hybrid of mysticism and a forest of signs and interactions that appear to be profoundly fluid and tender; while examining contemporary biopolitics and what might survive beyond the mountains of tradition.

Viktor El-Saieh was born in Port-Au-Prince, in 1988. His works have been presented at Locust Projects, Miami; El-Saieh Gallery, Port-Au-Prince; and CENTRAL FINE, Miami Beach, among other places.  His work is currently on view at the Perez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) and has been recently acquired by both PAMM and the ICA Miami. This is Viktor El-Saieh’s third individual presentation at the gallery.

Viktor El-Saieh in Italics

Diego Singh in Normal Arial

(1) The Dragon Vein in traditional Chinese art are the invisible threads or connectives which hold a painting together.