Adil Rabih’s works are distinguished by their chromatic density and striking materiality. Here, the paint does not just cover the canvas, it inhabits it, transforms it. As one of the texts accompanying the exhibition points out, “the material is almost sculptural», recalling the visceral approach of Nicolas de Staël, without adopting its formal principles. Rabih is not interested in the sterile repetition of abstract patterns. On the contrary, each painting is a place of tension between rigorous forms and a freer pictorial gesture.
Its colors – deep reds, nocturnal blues – stand out like vibrant blocks. They juxtapose, clash, without ever mixing. Rabih creates almost fleshy surfaces, but without giving in to excess. There is a palpable sensuality in his paintings, which brings to mind an abstraction “too carnal to be purely geometric”.
A moving palette
If Rabih revisits geometric shapes, he does not treat them as independent, cold entities. On the contrary, he charges them with a latent emotion, as if each square, each circle, each straight line told an intimate story. This ability to breathe life into abstract forms is undoubtedly what sets him apart the most. Where other artists limit themselves to formal exploration, Rabih redefines the boundaries between abstraction and figuration.
In “Ma Palette”, we can see an Etel Adnan, with this same luminous density and this capacity to summon mental landscapes. But where Adnan focuses on real landscapes, like Mount Tamalpais, Rabih constructs interior landscapes, territories of the soul. Each painting becomes a fragment of a larger story, that of a quest for identity which never finds a simple resolution. The angular shapes of his compositions seem to want to contain an energy which, at any moment, threatens to burst.
A halfway abstraction
We could say that Adil Rabih’s art oscillates between strict abstraction and poetic figuration, always halfway between these two worlds. His works captivate precisely by this duality: the formal rigor of the compositions is constantly counterbalanced by a freedom of movement, an almost wild expressiveness. The thick layers of paint overlap, creating a tactile depth that contrasts with the flatness of the geometric shapes.
Thus, Rabih invites us to rethink abstraction, not as an escape from reality, but as an exploration of what lies beneath the surface.
“Ma Palette” by Adil Rabih, from October 18 to November 30, at Gallery Kent, Tangier.
