The work of Hicham Berrada unites intuition and knowledge, science and poetry.
Sometimes bad weather can result in wonderful surprises! I was in Bad Ischl (Salzkammergut, Upper Austria) last week and it was raining all day. So I decided to visit the art exhibition Salt and Water at the “Sudhaus”, which is taking place there in connection with the European Capital of Culture 2024 .
It was contemporary art and, of course, some exhibits were more interesting or appealing than others, but on the whole I liked it very much. There was one artist which fascinated me the most: Hicham Berrada with his underwater landscapes! I could have sat and watched them grow and develop for hours.
His guiding principle is to make forms emerge, encourage them to appear rather than represent them. To do so, he uses scientific experimental method to activate different natural processes. “I try to control the phenomena I mobilize as a painter controls his pigments and brushes. My brushes and pigments would be parameters such as temperature, magnetism or light.”
For his series called Présage (2007) he created aquatic landscapes chemically activated in glass tanks. They are hermetic little worlds cut off from our own, made out of minerals immersed in an aqueous solution. To make them, a whole range of components is deployed to produce a wide variety of colours and shapes. Step by step the artist adds various elements, like iron, copper or zinc to a container with either acid or alkaline solution.
Born in 1986 in Casablanca, Morocco, Hicham Berrada lives and works in the north of France. If you want to read and see more please click here https://www.hichamberrada.com/
