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Adel Abdessemed
abdessemed
God is Design, 2005

The video work God is Design by the Algeria-born video and installation artist Adel Abdessemed arose a reaction to the xenophobic climate noticeable in New York after the attacks of September 11th 2001. Abdessemed fashioned the video from more than 3000 individual drawings of ornamental motifs taking up symbolism from the most varied of visual sources: the formal canons of Islam, Judaism and Christianity are as recognizable here as the formal language of geometric painting, of North African abstract patterns or of human cell structures. Abdessemed combines all this in a kind of universal language of form, a "visual Esperanto" negating the supremacy or dictatorship of a single formal canon.

Adel Abdessemed, * 1971 in Constantine (DZ), lives and works in Paris (F), Berlin (D), and USA

Adel Abdessemed, God is Design, 2005
Video animation made from 3050 drawings (b/w, sound)
4:44 Min., Loop
Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner, New York;
Christine König Galerie, Wien/Vienna