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Jellel Gasteli, a photographer from Tunisia
Returning to my African art quest, I came upon a country where artists are easy to find, the difficulty lies in choosing one of them to post in my 55 African Countries.
I ended up choosing Jellel Gasteli, a Tunisian photographer that lives and works in France.
Some information provided by the Michael Hoppen Gallery of London:
Born in 1958 in Tunisa, Jellel Gasteli graduated in 1985 from the Ecole Nationale de la Photographie in Paris, where he currently resides with his family. In 1984 he travelled back to Tunisa and began his White Series (Série Blanche) . In 1990 he travelled back to Alexandria Egypt as French Cultural Centre artist -in-residence. That same year Gasteli received grants from the Frence Ministry of Foreign Affairs and from Kodak-Pathé, which allowed him to produce a photographic series on the city of Tangler Morocco and he published a book on this work in 1991.
Jellel describes his work as follows:
From time to time, ever since 1984, I have photographed the medium of Hannanet and the architecture of Djerba Islands mosques. I seek to capture the purity of the walls, covered with several coats of white-wash and to reduce building to their underlying cubic shapes. I inscribe in these images the sensations provoked by the tension between lines and surfaces saturated with light. Their multiple geometric combinations imperceptibly make their way toward abstraction. I play at replacing static prespective with dynamic flat surfaces. Although I was not aware of it when I began them, I realise now that in these very large prints, making up what I call the White Series (Série Blanche) I endeavoured to capture the intencse pure spirit of place that I associate with my Tunisian childhood.
Jellel Gastelli’s Séries Blache has been exhibited at the Guggenheim aswell as being part of their permanent collection in New York.
And here an exhibition at the Institute of the Arab World, in Paris. The exhibition is called White Series and captures the beautiful whites of the Mediterranean landscape.