TORN
This exhibition comes at a time when... humanity has withered
and the soul is defeated;
when the feeling of being alive is bound to art and nomadism;
when you live nowhere yet move without direction..
The walls of the workshop are no longer enough and buying
an easel is no longer a solution
Here are the streets of Paris bringing surprises; the melting
pot of this world and its paradoxes
Here are the prints that criss-cross the city set on canvas
Here is the yearning to sit in contemplation on long journeys
alongside fields in yellow bloom, creating a hunger for colour
and evoke the light of the East
Carried like an echo on the surface of the canvas, amidst the
chaos of battling colours, rigid lines fighting curves, with here,
startling colours, and there, soft light
And here is the voice of colour, declaring the power of life;
here are the shapes whispering inside us.
That voice takes you to other limitless worlds, moving at times
like a childhood dream; at others like a nightmare that ends with
a deafening mass explosion or the destruction of symmetry
And just like that,
You choose to love life and reject death
You choose to be happy and cherish your memories
You choose to paint and touch with your eyes
Manhal Issa is a French artist of Syrian origin, born in 1969 in the Mediterranean city of Tartous. He has been painting since he was a child. At the age of 12, he gradually started to lose his eyesight andby the age of 15he was almost completely blind.
At the age of 18, thanks to cornea transplants in both eyes carried out in Russia, he regained his sight. Manhal Issa describes this event as a rebirth. His ability to see the shades of colour returned. Afterwards, he pursued a degree in Fine Arts and graduated with honors from Damascus University in 1995, where he majored in Painting. Manhal Issa was determined to make up for the time lost because of his eyesight.
Arriving in France in 2000, he began creating sculptures.
In 2003 he received his second diploma after graduating with honors from Versailles School of Art in “sculpture”. In 2004, he began to work with Video Art and photography. At the same time he continued to paint and arrange several exhibitions of paintings and videos in France and abroad, where he received several awards.
In 2008, he earned a Masters degree in “Plastic Arts and New Media” from Paris VIII University.
His pictorial vision of the human figure remains coherent and is based on a body in rapid motion which often appears as a human being or a wild animal jumping.
Manhal Issa lives in Paris, where he continues to create his art in these three media.
