Nour El Saleh “Interface” @ GNYP Gallery, Berlin

You just arrived and don’t have your bearings, but that’s fine – we don’t either. Take these binoculars. Who’s that big, naked, long-fingered figure crouching on yonder hilltop? You can see others looking, too: someone throwing up, someone cowering but curious. Maybe, subjectively, you look from the creature’s perspective, making everyone here somebody’s other. And perhaps this all reminds you of something big but ungraspable, the prickly texture of being alive: questions on questions, fuzzy longings, glimpses of unnameable mystery, strangeness accepted because it’s right in front of you. Nour El Saleh’s painting Spleen is, characteristically, a convocation of unanswerable queries: where, when, who, what level(s) of reality? (The exhibition title, Interface, might suggest the confected environments of video games.)…