Sacred Light: Genesis of a Series

The 'Sacred Light' series did not begin with an idea but with a sensation. It was in 2021, in the studio, on an autumn afternoon. I had laid a coat of cellulosic paint on an aluminium plate and, while waiting for the layer to dry, I was observing how the fading outside light behaved on the fresh surface. There was something in that light — its way of seeming to come from inside the paint rather than settling on it, its almost indescribable quality of collected presence — that stopped me. I knew I had found something, without yet knowing what it was.

The first works in the series were explorations rather than finished works. I tried different formats, different layer thicknesses, different colour associations. What quickly became evident was that the series would work in large formats — not monumental, but imposing enough for the physical presence of the work to be felt before the composition was analysed. The 150 x 200 cm formats became the series norm: large enough to envelop the gaze, manageable enough to travel under international fair conditions.

The choice of colours was the longest process. 'Sacred Light' had to be a particular light — not ordinary sunlight, not artificial electric light, but a light that possesses a quality of recollection, of spiritual concentration. I turned toward the colours I associate with this experience in my own cultural memory: the pale gold of illuminated Arabic manuscripts, the deep blue of Fez ceramics, the almost blinding white of Moroccan sanctuaries in midday light. These colours are not used as such — they are worked, mixed, layered until their initial intensity disappears to leave something more subtle and more powerful.

The series' exhibition at Galerie 38 in Casablanca, and then its participation in international fairs, revealed something unexpected: the resonance of these works with collectors from very different cultures. An Emirati collector told me that the title 'Sacred Light' had initially seemed presumptuous to him — and that the canvas had convinced him otherwise. A Swiss collector confided that these paintings reminded him of the light that falls in Gothic cathedrals. For me, who was thinking of the light of Islamic sanctuaries, the convergence was unexpected and revealing: in the search for sacred light, there is something that transcends particular religious traditions to touch a universal of human experience.

Today, the series continues to evolve. Each new painting in the series is both faithful to the original intuition — that light which seems to come from within the matter — and different from its predecessors. This is how series work, when they truly work: they allow an idea to be explored to its exhaustion, knowing that exhaustion may never come, because the idea is rich enough to renew itself indefinitely.

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