Beirut · 29/10/2026
Zad Moultaka: Toupie
In the beginning there is not yet an image, but a presence searching for its form. A field of colour settles. Axes and tensions organise the space. Then comes the gesture: matter shifts, is erased, is crossed through, sometimes disappears. A form appears, hesitates, transforms. The spinning top is the starting point of this search. It stands only by spinning; its balance is never still, for it turns its fall into stability. From one painting to the next it appears, vanishes, returns in another guise. It becomes movement, trace, at times a simple presence at the very edge of the visible. What remains is the space it has disturbed. Each painting therefore seeks less to fix a form than to create the conditions for its appearance. In this balance that must always be made anew, in this way of holding steady at the very heart of whatever might make us topple, something of our own condition perhaps comes to the surface. The spinning top remains a physical and perceptual phenomenon. But through what it gives us to see and to feel, it perhaps touches something of our humanity.
