No Captagon in Raqqah

Captagon State Paintings

Captagon Bay

“The Angel that presided ‘oer my birth Said, “Little creature, form’d of Joy and Mirth, “Go love without the help of any Thing on Earth.” William Blake.

“Love is giving something you don’t have to someone who doesn’t want it.” Jaques Lacan.

These paintings set out to be direct, no more than the sum of their parts: stripy canvas, a child plays with a severed form, udders, the Guantanamo orange, a telephone and a drum. No cleverly suggested absence around which the painted elements suggestively hover. Half playful/half imbecilic. Everything explicit and still the nothingness that is a paintings becoming still persists.

John the Baptist, Hussein Ibn Ali, Holophenes… I was raising a one year old in Beirut waiting for ISIS to reach the Mediterranean. Observing him absorbed in transforming whatever comes to hand into his imaginary world. A play of hide and seek with the thing as it disappears into meaning and back out again. That passing skill we loose.(Beirut 2015)

Lacan - Graph of Desire

Mural Persian School, (17th century) / Iman Zahdah Chah Zaid Mosque, Isfahan, Iran