In this exhibition, al Kadiri delves into an autobiographical self-exploring journey to search for the remains of the last red rose. Contemplating his personal narrative of loss and grief he paints it black. Nyctophilia is a psychological syndrome that refers to the love of night and darkness. It explains the state of solitude and anxiety the artist was in when he created this body of work.
This exhibition is a continuation of al Kadiri’s “Arcadia”, a series
that documents lived moments of a couple: two refugees in a utopia that the artist imagined and invented in search of a peaceful and untouched haven, far away from a world that had lost its balance due to death, wars and conflicts.

In “Nyctophilia”, the utopia he imagined becomes his. We see him preserve the element of nature in terms of the general atmosphere. “It is only in nature that one finds his true self” says al Kadiri. We easily identify the many layers of each work: the charcoal drawing, the heavy expressive brushstrokes, the wide spectrum of radiant colors. But then he comes to cover it all with a thick layer of Black. A final act that raises the question: Is it a destructive act or one that allows him to find the remains of a previous life? In the shadows of the blackness he casts on his landscapes, he searches for that place of melancholy and ecstasy in which his inner child will find consolation and peace despite the darkening of the life scene around him.

In an ode to a hue that is considered one of the most charged constructions of identity and signifiers of a condition al Kadiri sees in black the possibility to grasp all colors at once, giving it a new meaning: the one of clarity or reaching the essence of things and feelings.d