Arabic Numeral Series 9 (1981)

With some exceptions the Arabics take the idea of the void as their ground That is the light we do see almost always seems to be set against darkness or occasionally against white these momentary flickers that materialize tenuously out of emptiness But the darkness is not night or even simply some more abstract absence of light but a more profound vacuum it represents a world stripped of all the coordinates of the known an unmeasurable absence These lushly sensual pleasurabletoview films are also terrifying their unpredictability continually enacting new dramas of surprise alternatively swamps the viewer in light and leaves him adrift in darkness