Papers of a rational being
By Mike Derderian
Star Staff Writer

What is rational to a philosopher might be irrational to an ordinary man and such is the way art is. It was and will never be rational, especially among those standing in front of a painting trying to find a glimmer of meaning in a sea of paint.

Traces of words left by an artist here and there; words that are sketched and scribbled in the upper and lower corners of the color-tarnished spaces. Silhouetted hazy figures of what might come out as a man or a side image of his upper body. If you enter Sadik Kwaish Al Fraji’s exhibition at the 4Wall gallery in search of answers in his Papers of A Rational Being you are in the wrong place.
Some overzealous art aficionados claim that in order to understand the work of an artist one has to have an artistic sense but the problem with Arab and foreign artists nowadays is that they overdo it with the experimental phase. I haven’t seen any of Al Fraji’s earlier works so it would be unfair to judge his recent exhibition with nothing but my “artistic” feel without any prior knowledge of his painting techniques, symbols and most importantly his ethos.

But upon reading the words he wrote on his exhibition card, it is evident that Fraji’s paintings were as an attempt to manifest his own psyche on canvas more than to incorporate the rationale of his fellow humans.
Al Fraji wrote, “It is in my belief that the two paths of philosophy and art meet in one major concern. It is true that each has its own tools and problems, yet they share the same sentimental depth.”
Papers of A Rational Being is certainly not an in-depth search into universal themes as much as it researches the personal issues of its own artist.
City inside me, city around me; Our Dreams, our secrets; The Formula of the I; A hole in my head; I saw Sysiphus and The Individual are all titles that allude to the inner being of man Fraji is trying to paint.

Born in Baghdad in 1960, Al Fraji first acquired a painting diploma from the Institute of Fine Arts in 1982. It was followed by a painting BA in plastic arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in 1987. In the year 2000 he obtained a graphic design high diploma from CHK Constantijn Huygens in The Netherlands.

For colors, Fraji used ink that was applied over rice and Chinese paper that was fastened over light wooden boards. In other works the rice paper was fixed over a background made out of textile. In a work entitled Description: Rational Being, which is a digital print made out of nine frames, each frame holds a snapshot of a human head that was given a grayish tone. All heads are identical and the faces are covered by a big black smudge. This work is probably one of the best on display.

”The fact that I exist, and my awareness of that fact; places me in an unceasing confrontation with existence itself; with its intensity, frigidity, generality and its unbearable bluntness,” further wrote Al Fraji, who appeared to shun the idea of being fully immortalized in one of his works so he chose to block his human identity in order to give the viewer the chance to delve into his mind.
Finding answers and meanings to Fraji’s work requires an ardent viewer able to pinpoint the key symbol that forms the solution to this complex exhibition. Nothing is what it is until you prove it is not and unless the viewer finds Fraji’s password h/she will be denied entry to the folds of his crinkly world of color.
In I saw Sysiphus, Fraji brilliantly places us inside the head of the Greek figure that was punished by the gods. He was sentenced to a lifetime of hardship by pushing a little rock uphill and every time he reached the top the rock would roll back to its starting point. ”The mere thought that I exist bears within the possibility for me not to exist. I could have not existed. And on that terrifying margin of my existence and the coincidence of my awakening in it I gather myself and paint.”

Fraji’s dominant colors are earth-tone shades that amalgamated with lighter shades of yellow, green and red. His technique appear to be refined, however, to better understand the symbolic aspects of Fraji’s work one should read the titles of each work. You might find his works quite therapeutic in the manner they appear to be images taken from cards created by Sigmund Freud.