NIGHT TIME (AS SEEN BY SIM OUCH) | LATIFA ECHAKHCH
Night Time (As Seen by Sim Ouch) is a work created by the artist Latifa Echakhch (Morocco, 1974) in 2023, consisting of acrylic on canvas mounted on a cement base.
The subject of the artwork is a reinterpretation of the work of Sim Ouch, a photographer and friend of the artist, specifically a photograph that is part of a series dedicated to nightlife around Lake Geneva.
The scene features two people lying down, a man resting his head on a woman’s abdomen, both with their eyes closed and in a relaxed position, holding hands. They are lying on a field with warm yellow tones, likely a wheat field.
Night Time (As Seen by Sim Ouch) is an artwork constructed on contrasts not only semantic but also structural and material. The almost bucolic setting suggested by this yellow bed of spikes, which brings feelings of peace and tranquility, is disrupted by the choice of the actual material background, raw, rough, and cold. The cement emerges forcefully and dominantly because the action that formalizes the work is one of destruction, removing part of the painting to reveal the support. As if it were a canvas damaged by the time and neglect. But it is also a dimension of memory, which proceeds by fragments, by oblivion and removals, by flashes and obscurations, generating a physiologically incomplete narrative.
This operation of fragmented reduction of the surface is not just a visual, aesthetic, and narrative expedient, but allows the artist to reflect on the elements of composition, on what is essential and significant for the representation and what is not, a sort of visual editing.
The artwork appears divided in half, a sort of diptych composed of two separate parts that complete each other when united, as an element not only of formal composition but especially as a symbolic action.
Duality is a concept that frequently appears in Echakhch’s work, a dualism that is temporal, before and after; structural, complete and incomplete; emotional, anticipation and fulfillment; creative, reality and imagination.
With her work, the artist aims to stimulate an active contemplation of the artwork, inviting the viewer to achieve a full understanding of the context that led to its creation, as well as to reflect on the ambiguity of reality itself.
Latifa Echakhch
Night Time (As Seen by Sim Ouch), 2023
Acrylic and concrete on canvas, 200 x 300 x 2,6 cm (78.7 x 118 x 1 in)
Courtesy of the artist and kaufmann repetto Milan / New York
Photo: Andrea Rossetti
03/07/24