Osama Al Rayyan (né en 1995 à Damas, en Syrie) vit et travaille aujourd’hui à Bâle. Sa pratique artistique se construit librement, sans s’attacher à des références précises, laissant se créer une porosité entre ses souvenirs personnels et son rapport à l’histoire de l’art. Fidèle à cette approche, Al Rayyan choisit de ne pas théoriser sa pratique ni d’en livrer une interprétation définitive, privilégiant l’expérimentation. Sur ses toiles, des couleurs aux contrastes subtils : tons orangés, jaunes et touches de bleu grisé se superposent en fines couches, faisant émerger des silhouettes et des paysages aux contours indéfinis. Par cette approche, il remet en question le caractère immédiat de ses choix formels et chromatiques, pour laisser place à l’exploration et au plaisir de la découverte.
Osama Al Rayyan (born in 1995 in Damascus, Syria) currently lives and works in Basel. His artistic practice evolves freely, without adhering to specific references, allowing a fluid interplay to emerge between his personal memories and his relationship to art history. True to this approach, Al Rayyan chooses not to theorize his practice or offer a definitive interpretation of it, favoring experimentation instead. On his canvases, colors with subtle contrasts—shades of orange, yellow, and touches of grayish blue—are layered in thin coats, bringing forth silhouettes and landscapes with undefined contours. Through this approach, he challenges the immediacy of his formal and chromatic choices, making room for exploration and the joy of discovery.
The Art Of Poetry
To gaze at a river made of time and water
And remember Time is another river.
To know we stray like a river
and our faces vanish like water.
To feel that waking is another dream
that dreams of not dreaming and that the death
we fear in our bones is the death
that every night we call a dream.
To see in every day and year a symbol
of all the days of man and his years,
and convert the outrage of the years
into a music, a sound, and a symbol.
To see in death a dream, in the sunset
a golden sadness—such is poetry,
humble and immortal, poetry,
returning, like dawn and the sunset.
Sometimes at evening there's a face
that sees us from the deeps of a mirror.
Art must be that sort of mirror,
disclosing to each of us his face.
They say Ulysses, wearied of wonders,
wept with love on seeing Ithaca,
humble and green. Art is that Ithaca,
a green eternity, not wonders.
Art is endless like a river flowing,
passing, yet remaining, a mirror to the same
inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
and yet another, like the river flowing.
-Jorge Luis Borges
