The thought that metal could be a space, and that darkness could be a metal (material), seized Sabah and would not let go, and on his return to his studio, he tried to brew a material emulsion of graphite powder and fix it upon a layer of black oil, in a bid to achieve the same shiny, silvery patina, a materiality that has both the cold of metal and the heat of a fire.

Above the black darkness that surrounds the eighty paper panels in the series Face Down hovers a large, hybrid entity. Through the various orifices in its body – empty eye sockets, ears, nostrils, breasts, navel, anus, vaginas, and penises – some invisible, weightless element solidifies into a metallic patina. The struggle between the images becomes a grotesque lynching of writhing organs, monumental winged, hybrid human-beastly objects that enfold miniature incidents or landscapes. It is a disrupted world that does not differentiate between darkness and light, sky and earth, or strong and weak.

Face Down is an ex-territory trapped within a capsule that has fallen out of time, like a space that follows its own gravitational laws. It is as though these paintings – at once mythological and contemporary – have always been there, hidden, waiting patiently for their moment of birth.

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