Mehdi Moutashar

Divided into chronological and thematic chapters, this monograph on Mehdi Moutashar covers all the aspects of a body of work that began in the mid-1960s and continues to develop today in a way that is as protean as it is extraordinarily homogeneous.

Based on the idea of measurement, his approach is as much linked to the foundations of Arab-Muslim art, and more particularly to arabesque, as to those of geometric minimalism, but above all it bears witness to a global and limitless approach to space, where floors, walls, ceilings and the horizon are all part of the same unity.

Through the founding figure of the square, or the importance of the module, of which the brick is historically the first manifestation, through the poetics of wefts, interlacing, cuts, angles and folds, it is in fact a question of considering geometry in its primary sense: measuring the earth.

The book follows the development of a moving, continuous line, magnetised by the four cardinal points, which is embodied in wall pieces, installations, collages, wall/floor works and monumental constructions, encountering an infinite range of materials along the way, moving freely from burnt wood to elastic tensor, not forgetting metal or powdered pigment, always ultramarine blue.

This book also devotes a chapter to his long collaboration, in the 1980s, with the famous Iraqi architect Rifat Chadirji, who involved him in the design of an official building in Baghdad for both the exterior and interior spaces.