Djabril Boukhenaïssi

A 2018 graduate of the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts de Paris, Djabril Boukhenaïssi expresses his sensibility through painting and engraving. In his early years, he wandered the aisles of the Louvre to exercise his eye as much as his hand, and from then on imbued his practice with influences from the 19th and 20th centuries.

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

Through his readings, Djabril Boukhenaïssi raises questions about our relationship relationship with 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 are we to apprehend the passage of time, when notions of duration and continuity clash with the concept of the instant? Where do our memories fit in? How do the constellations of images that populate our memories evolve?

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

In his work Childhood, the artist brings to life the reminiscences of his youth, illustrating the house he lived in as a child. Set against a silent landscape, the building retains its old-fashioned proportions, though these have changed with adulthood.