Implosion, 2013
Oil on canvas
140 x 160 cm
Courtesy of the artist and Caroline Pagès Gallery, Lisbon
DRISS OUADAHI
Implosion
June 27 – September 21, 2013
Constructing a point of view
Driss Ouadahi is an Algerian artist, born in Casablanca, Morocco, in 1959. After starting a diploma in architecture in Algiers, he joined the Ecole des Beaux-Arts there where he took classes from 1984 to 1987. In 1988 he left Algeria and joined the Düsseldorf Academy of Arts where he obtained an MA in painting. He has lived and worked in Düsseldorf since.
Throughout his artistic career, Driss Ouadahi has created special links between architecture and painting. The resulting works are abstract compositions featuring grid patterns, whose density evokes the architecture of the outskirts of big cities and their tightly woven networks of high-rise housing.
Moving around this organised, structured and tiered impression of the urban landscape, and in trying to capture its spirit and movement, Ouadahi creates a space with a hybrid language, blending structured drawing and painting, where the vibrations of light and chromatic richness constitute a break with the rigidity and monotony of the structures. Large brush-strokes give volume and depth to the repetitive geometry in highly colourful compositions, creating a surface which is at once attractive and impenetrable and which leaves us wondering about life behind these walls.
The inhabitants may not feature in these paintings, and yet they still reveal something of the social, townplanning and ethnic policies that are embodied in their mesh. Evoking architectural structures without their inhabitants means understanding the complexity of a place that can never be reduced only to what it is in itself. The composition of Ouadahi's works, abiding by a poetry of architectural codes, transforms the visible into a metaphor tending to point out an invisible driving force behind that which we see. The power of the visible depends, then, on its ability to suggest the invisible, and in this way Driss Ouadahi uses architecture as an abstract visual context where he constructs our way of seeing.
- Brahim Alaoui, June 2013.
Solo shows include Trans-location (2013) at Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco; Breathing Space (2012) at Lawrie Shabibi Gallery, Dubai, UAE; and exhibitions at the Horst Schuler Gallery, Düsseldorf, Germany (2011); Herbert- Weisenburger-Stiftung, Rastatt, Germany (2009); dok25a, Düsseldorf, Germany (2008); Atelier am Eck, Düsseldorf, Germany (2005); Centre d’Art Contemporain Istres, Marseille, France (2003); Klinkhammer-Metzner Gallery, Düsseldorf, Germany (2001); and JASIM Gallery, Düsseldorf, Germany (2000).
Collective exhibitions include 25 ans de créativité árabe (2013), curated by Ihab El Laban, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris and Abu Dhabi ; 100%_100 ans, 100 artistes (2013), curated by Mohamed Rachdi, Espace d'Art-Société Générale, Casablanca, Morocco; Horizons croisés (2012), curated by Brahim Alaoui, Moussem culturel international d’Assilah, Morocco; Desviar do Olhar (2012), Caroline Pagès Gallery, Lisbon; Le Retour (2011), 3rd FIAC, MAMA, Algiers, Algeria; Magreb: Dos Orillas (2011), curated by Brahim Alaoui, Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid; Future of a Promise (2011), curated by Lina Lazaar, 54th Venice Biennale, Italy; Geometric Days (2011), Exit Art, New York; Looking Inside Out (2009), curated by Maaretta Jaukkuri and Cristina Ricupero, Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Norway; Périfériks (2009), Centre d’Art Neuchâtel, Switzerland; Iconoclastes: Les territoires de l’esprit (2008), curated by Kader Attia, Galerie Anne de Villepoix, Paris; Alger Capitale de la Culture Arabe (2007), Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art, Algiers, Algeria; Sonntag (2006) and, since 2006, he featured in several group shows at the Hosfelt Gallery in New York and San Francisco.
His work can be seen, among others, in the public collections of the Herbert-Weisenburger-Stiftung, Rastatt, Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, Nadour Collection and Stadtsparkasse Baden-Baden.
Implosion is his first solo show at the Caroline Pagès Gallery and in Portugal.
Caroline Pagès Gallery
Rua Tenente Ferreira Durão, 12 - 1° Dto.
1350-315 Lisbon
Portugal
T: 351 213873376
Caroline Pagès Gallery
Read On... Caroline Pagès Gallery, Lisbon