WAY melvin

I have had amnesia for thirty-five years. Now I am a different person. The same, auto-identical… I am 58 years old but next year I will be around 473 years… I don’t draw, I do repair science, medical science … I have bought Puerto Rico, my palace was in Texas… I have been President of the United States on several occasions, and I have played in funk groups….” says Melvin Way, born in South Carolina and raised in Brooklyn. His interest in the natural sciences dates back to secondary school. As an adult, he began to experience psychotic episodes that forced him to break off his studies at the Technical Career Institute in New York. He soon found himself on the margins of society and living on the street. In the 1980s he met the artist Andrew Castrucci who took care of him and encouraged him in his artistic work. Melvin Way draws on on small formats, made up of small pieces of paper glued together, blackened with a ballpoint pen with “mathematical” or “chemical” formulas, accompanied by symbols and enigmatic words, then covered in places with adhesive tape.

22 minutes. HD. English with subtitles. concept / Bruno Decharme and Barbara Safarova. direction / Bruno Decharme. edit / César Decharme. production / abcd and System B 2017

ABDELARRAZZAK aouam

1956 . khouribga . morocco

Aouam Abdellarrazzak, nicknamed Ralhi (“elder brother”), was born in a mining town south of Casablanca. He originally did truck maintenance for a print shop, but the business went bankrupt. His marriage fell apart, and on top of it he landed in prison for involuntary manslaughter, which sent him into deep depression and resulted in his drug addiction. With the help of his older sister, he managed to control his addiction and found a precarious equilibrium in drawing. His work depicts hybrid characters in which plant and animal shapes are intertwined with human faces. Abdellarrazzak long viewed his art as nothing more than a meaningless pastime and even threw some of his drawings away.