A Soldier of Stars

Pocket size bottles of an artisan crafted herbal mix tagged Soldier of Stars Elixir, made in collaboration with Hedgewitch Holistics, sits next to a silk and wool blend wall piece that upholds a massive multi-carpus flaring spot. A three hour looped video of the artist cutting is projected right above. As a yogi, Rahme’s care towards consistency and stillness is present in his intricate and timely crafted techniques. Through extensive hours of meditative cutting, gluing, sawing, and listening to the sound of the Detroit, he cuts space out of factory images to retain memories. The carefully cut sparkles of welding marks juxtaposed on fabrics reminisce memories of factory workers and owners alike.

His macroscopical wall pieces are accompanied by comforting domestic objects. A humongous kaleidoscope forest of foliage, blossoms, and peacock feathers adhered to a radiant blue sky is the backdrop for a director chair with navy canvas placed next to an ornamental side table where Richard Burton’s Narrative of “The Little Prince” created on a Moog synthesizer (1974) is played into a headphone.

Although the sound element is not necessarily always there, it is always imagined. The sound of factories and the silence of forests, mountains, valleys, and heating metals. The shape resulting from the marriage of two metals is questionably a blossoming shape; it is 100% man made. Does it have a form of consciousness? The shape speaks.

Rahme’s fascination with body intelligence is framed by the notion of pain and his long term arthritic mysteries. His sensitivity towards barometric pressure and environmental shifts, experienced as stiffness and flexibility, shapes his understanding of flow and placement.

The artist’s art practice is focused on creating space through sound, paper, and objects. His visual and sonic experiences are rooted in his images and senses of Detroit. His lengthy jam sessions, large scale collages, and newly established bamboo land and former art residency in Hamtramck, Michigan, are examples of his spatial intentions.