Lot 503: mf - Halim Karabibene , Tunisian B. 1962 Nuit Blanche au Vieux Port (White Night at the Old Port) oil on canvas

signed oil on canvas

measurements note 150 by 150cm.; 59 by 59in.

La Marsa, Galerie El Marsa Oniriades , 2006

Exhibition Catalogue, La Marsa, Galerie El Marsa Mémoire de demain, 2005, p. 20, illustrated in colour

Executed in 2006.
In choosing to illustrate his social and political concerns through the medium of dreams, Halim Karabibene removes the viewer from the immediacy of socio-political commentary, taking him on a journey into the twisted narrative of another place and time. In the manner of the sixteenth century Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch, Karabibene assaults the imagination with imagery this is at once lyrical and horrifying. He plunges the viewer into an alien universe, with its own space and perspective where pain and suffering seem to prevail. In style Karabibene and Bosch share an attention to detail, the strange figures painted in miniature, and the nightmarish quality of their narrative. In practice the artists share the experience of political upheaval, Bosch in sixteenth century northern Europe, and Karabibene in the Middle East of the twenty-first century. Both artists are concerned with the anxieties of their time and society, and the tragedy of human existence, expressing these emotions through the surreal nature of their work. There is a strong religious and moralistic element to the work of Bosch, who was a deeply religious man. His works were lectures on the consequences of man's actions. It is hard not to make such associations with Karabibene, where the lower part of this painting is populated by grotesque, partially clothed figures indulging in acts of hedonism, drinking and carousing, a female nude in central place, her breasts and belly distended. The flesh of these people clearly mortal, as indicated by the prone figure in the lower right corner. All of these sad characters gaze yearningly to the heavens above, where strange creatures float free. This feeling of being helplessly anchored in sin and/or mortality is accentuated by the fact that we cannot see the feet, and in many cases even the legs, of those figures cast in shadow. Although Karabibene's agenda is far less spiritual than that of Bosch, indeed he is a staunch atheist, it would appear that what we see is a discourse on human vice. Yet these figures that float like the sprite Ariel in the wide skies above, flooded with light and painted in cool blues, greys and pinks, are given countenances that are not immediately pure and good. In this, the artist admonishes the viewer to find beauty within, and not without. That it is the soul that needs be good, and that appearance can be deceptive. Karabibene embraces metaphor and his aesthetic vocabulary is complex, his works a Pandora's box of references that is constantly revealing more narrative. In appealing to our subconscious he allows us to absorb his oblique message.