Nour El Saleh "Interface" @ GNYP Gallery, Berlin
You just arrived and don’t have your bearings, but that’s fine – we don’t either. Take these binoculars. Who’s that big, naked, long-fingered figure crouching on yonder hilltop? You can see others looking, too: someone throwing up, someone cowering but curious. Maybe, subjectively, you look from the creature’s perspective, making everyone here somebody’s other. And perhaps this all reminds you of something big but ungraspable, the prickly texture of being alive: questions on questions, fuzzy longings, glimpses of unnameable mystery, strangeness accepted because it’s right in front of you. Nour El Saleh’s painting Spleen is, characteristically, a convocation of unanswerable queries: where, when, who, what level(s) of reality? (The exhibition title, Interface, might suggest the confected environments of video games.) All of this reflects, in turn, the fact that the artist only arrived shortly before we did. She almost always begins painting without knowing what she’s going to paint, working towards a heightened hinge zone where it’s clear something is about to happen, but not what.
September 16, 2025
