The Dark Side

The Dark Side is the title of the new photographic low-key series of multimedia artist Fahar Al-Salih, known for his explosive action paintings and vibrantly colourful sponge objects. Yet his photographic oeuvre talks a different language, choosing an almost quiet and melancholic path of expression. In his photographs, mostly taken on journeys to the various homelands of the Iraqi-born artist, Al-Salih documents his surroundings in an almost voyeuristic manner, as the snapshots are taken spontaneously in the moment, hardly noticed by the depicted subjects. And still the images work beyond concrete matters, beyond the visible, as if the photographs were to reveal a substance in between one moment and another, the oscillating moment. In his series the artist documents an almost cineastic ‘univers noir', capturing a magic twilight that reminds not only stylistic devices of cinema, but goes far back to Chiaroscuro painting, the zenith of baroque art and distinguished representatives such as Caravaggio or Rembrandt.