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Lot description
Mahjoub BEN BELLA (Algeria,1946-Lille, 2020) Calligraphic and painted paving stone Mixed media (acrylic, ink, pencil) on stone 17 x 14 x 18 cm *** Mixed media (acrylic, ink, pencil) on stone (6¾ × 5½ × 7⅛ in.). This work is recorded in the artist's catalog raisonné. This work is recorded in the catalog raisonné under number NB391. Exhibitions : Galerie Claude Lemand, Paris, 2010. MAMA, Musée d'Art Moderne d'Alger, Algeria, 2012. Galerie Wagner, Le Touquet, France, 2013. Here, Ben Bella hijacks a fragment of paving stone - a raw material, street or building site element - to turn it into a sacralized support, completely covered with signs, symbols and pseudo-calligraphic blocks. On each side, box-like compositions evoke handwritten pages, medieval parchment and ancient tablets; colored inks mingle with dense, deceptively legible writing, simulating a sacred language somewhere between stylized Arabic and hermetic code. This paving stone is part of a larger body of work in which the artist takes poor materials - stone, wood, salvaged objects - and turns them into surfaces inhabited by writing and light.