Catalogue Raisonne - Works 1988-2015 “These ceramic sculptures of Abdessemed’s father, Essaïd, reading his newspaper, are small in scale with respect to the sitter. The sculptures are covered with marks made by a stick of graphite, evoking the materiality of newspapers whose greasy ink once stained readers’ hands. From the standpoint of the production process, the pencil marks induce a kind of inversion: normally drawing precedes the work of sculpting which, when it comes to porcelain, cannot be corrected or added to once it has been fired. By making these graphite marks Abdessemed frees the ceramic from its rigid condition and returns the work to the status of a sketch. Until a few decades ago, the figure of a man standing while reading a newspaper was highly familiar. People learned about the doings of the world while physically present in the public sphere of that same world. This public act of reading “official” news signified membership in the established social order. Abdessemed has often situated his relationship to his father in the broader context of his relationship to authority, as emblematized by the writing and reading of newspapers. The small scale of these figures with respect to their base is therefore significant insofar as it turns the man who is reading into a monument that has lost his power of subjection.”