Exhibition "Poem": Hassan Darsi's art in progress

Presented in Casablanca, curated by Abdellah Karroum, Hassan Darsi's latest exhibition, "Poem," invites a re-reading of a work in constant gestation, questioning the place of the citizen-spectator in its transformational process.

A dialectic is always at work in Hassan Darsi's creative approach: between the production of a piece and its reactivation, as well as between the place of creation and the exhibition space. The Artorium space of the TGCC Foundation, which currently hosts the "Poem" exhibition, is no exception to the rule, presenting from the outset two installations referring to two different temporalities. Facing the reactivation of the model Le square d’en bas, created between 2014 and 2017, and dedicated to the former Maison Légal Frères et Cie, a former wood processing factory founded in 1921, located opposite the former site of the Atelier de la Source du Lion, the spectator discovers an installation of living plants, Sabaar (Agaves), collected by the artist in his Benslimane studio. The destruction of the building that Darsi documented through his model and which he seemed to want to counter the disappearance of, as he had done for the Hermitage Park, is opposed by the resilience of plants that have become metaphors for an art that survives its ruins, as Anselm Kiefer expressed. "These plants occupy the space with a certain relief, notes exhibition curator Abdellah Karroum, like bodies that metamorphose and are reborn from their roots."

This metamorphosis continues in the resumption of old series: that of Dents de sagesse (Wisdom Teeth) or Amulettes (Amulets). Covered in gilding which, as Abdellah Karroum reminds us, "take the form of countries mapped by colonialism," the Dents de sagesse benefit from a new suspended display, allowing the spectator to wander through a forest of symbols echoing the Amulettes and a new series of sculptures composed of plexiglass amulets, Sarab / Mirage in which the shape of the African continent can be guessed. "In my imagination, specifies Hassan Darsi, the amulet is us. Our lives are permeable to the influences that come to us from plants, air, space, and the cosmos."

But all of Darsi's art, consisting of an incessant back-and-forth between the processes of destruction at work in both Nature and our cities and those of reconstruction, is to carry the dialectic to the very heart of each work. The use of plexiglass in the Sarab series creates a double effect of transparency and opacity, inviting the spectator to move around the sculptures to discern the shape of the African continent which evaporates as quickly as it appears to our eyes, like a mirage. Undoubtedly, the dialogue that takes place between the two series Soulèvements (Uprisings) and Vestiges is exemplary of this transformational creation process: the first series, already partially presented at the Comptoir des Mines in Marrakech in the exhibition بعبارة أخرى / Autrement dit (In other words), in 2024, thus takes the form of coloured tondi made from wooden cubes, of which the Vestiges series presents on paper the imprint obtained from their impregnation in stamp ink baths. The entropic movement of the sculptures is echoed by an aesthetic of the trace, a sine qua non condition for a world called upon to resist all the forces of destruction that pass through it. It is up to the citizen-spectator, Darsi seems to tell us, to seize these plastic proposals to transform them into reality, which is always perfectible.

Olivier Rachet

Exhibition "Poem" by Hassan Darsi, Artorium Art Space TGCC Foundation, Casablanca, until July 31, 2025