Djabril BOUKHENAÏSSI

A graduate of the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 2018, Djabril Boukhenaïssi expresses his sensitivity through painting and engraving. In his early days, he explored the halls of the Louvre Museum to train his eye as much as his hand, and from then on, his practice was influenced by the 19th and 20th centuries.

The techniques he adopts are the result of long and meticulous research, which he never separates from his artistic and philosophical reflections. The medium must resonate with the subject matter: etching and aquatint meet, as well as oil and pastel.

Through his readings, Djabril Boukhenaïssi nurtures his questions about our relationship to memory and time. Among his references, The Waves by Virginia Woolf, published in 1931: the work parallels two divergent theses on temporality, respectively defended by Bergson and Bachelard. How can we understand the passage of time, when the notions of duration and continuity oppose the concept of the instant? What place do our memories retain? How do the constellations of images that populate our memories evolve?

In 2023, Private Choice presents a series of works articulated around the subject of loss and disappearance. As if to materialize the memories that escape him as he tries to cling to them, the artist alternates between washes of oil paint erased with turpentine and veils of pastel, thus playing with the porosity and fragility of this latter medium. The characters are solitary and their mental image is moving, sequenced, sometimes fantasized.

In his work Childhood, the artist brings to the canvas the reminiscences of his youth, illustrating the house he lived near as a child. Standing in the heart of a silent landscape, the building displays its proportions of yesteryear, yet disrupted in adulthood.