artSümer will host “A Red Spot In Jupiter”, the first solo exhibition of the Algerian-French artist Fayçal Baghriche in Turkey from 9 February until 24 March 2018. Through his video, readymade and photographic works included in the exhibition, the artist highlights how things we experience, what we are taught, the cultures we inhabit affect our perception and behavior.
Fayçal Baghriche’s dual exposure to Arab and Western cultures throughout his life gives him a double layered cultural perspective, which feeds into his work. Working on the principles of abstracted, inverted or accelerated visual discourse, the artist creates artworks, which question the organization of the schema of societal reality. Galileo and Kepler’s anagramatic exchanges, the inspiration for the title of this exhibition, are about the masking, the hiding of realiity. Drawing different conclusions from different appearances, the truth becomes hidden. Baghriche exposes the weird and poetic side of the impact rule-ridden systems regulating the public space and collective social behavior have our daily lives with these investigations. He disarms the viewers’ reflexes to identify commonplace objects by presenting both easily identifiable objects and mixed-up and manipulated satiric videos.
We can see the reflections of this state of having two cultures as experienced by the artist himself in the series titled “Family friendly”. With this series created while Baghriche was in residency in Dubai, the artist shares the markings on nude images in foreign art publications made by incumbents which, while commonplace in the West, have to be adapted to the cultural set of values of the United Arab Emirates as these images are deemed unsuitable to be seen in the public space. Here two versions of the same censored image are presented side by side showing the hand gesture of the censor. Without taking a prejudiced stance, Baghriche shows an interest in the aesthetic and social values of how ordinary people adapt Western imagery to their own culture through their own social and cultural values.
“The Night of Doubt”, which could be considered as biographic, is the latest video work by Baghriche that makes use of the black and white films the artist watched on his family’s television, making up an important part of his childhood. The name of the video comes from an expression used to describe the night before the new moon according to the Muslim Lunar calendar. In this work the artist questions belief systems, which form decision mechanisms not through pure knowledge but through popular discourse and speculation by using the intuitive trigger of worry.
“The Clock” is a vintage clock whose seconds hand, followed by its other hands, move at an unusual rate. Each second is different than another. This clock embodies a critical stance in terms the objective measurement of time.
Baghriche invites the viewers to rethink critically and distance themselves from a normalized reality with his performances, videos, installations and photographs. He shares with the viewers the projection of colors of the human psychology on to the colors of their dreams as well as the increasing entropy of the illusion of the questioning of personal and collective truth as they open our eyes in pure darkness or the production of certain cultural behaviors due to the shaping of their perception.
Fayçal Baghriche (1972) was born in Skidda, Algeria. He studied at the École Nationale Supérieure d'Arts La Villa Arson before moving to Paris where currently lives and works. In addition to the diplomas of fine arts and plastic expression, Baghriche has a Bachelor’s degree in performing arts from UFR des Sciences et Lettres, Nice Sophia, Antipolis and a Master’s degree in multimedia - hypermedia from the School of Fine Arts, Paris.
His work has been shown in numerous exhibitions in France and abroad. Among the most recent solo exhibitions include Le Shed, Centre d’Art de Normandie, France ( 2017), Human Resources, Los Angeles (2014); The Delfina Foundation, London (2012); Bielefelder Kunstverein, Bielefelder, Germany (2010); Centre d’Art Contemporain, Le Quartier, Quimper (2010).
His work has also been included in the Dakar Biennale, Senegal (2014); Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2012), Triennale of Sorocoba, Brazil. Baghriche was involved in the 54th Venice Biennial (2011) as part of the first pan-Arab pavilion, The Future of a Promise.
Other group exhibitions featuring his work were at Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018), Villa Arson, Nice (2017), Centro Pecci, Prato (2017), Malmö Konstmuseum, Sweden (2017); Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City (2016); Arab Image Foundation, Beirut (2016), The Mosaics Rooms, London (2014); Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (2012); and Musée d’Art Moderne d’Alger, Algeria (2010).
His works are in the collections of Collection du Musée National d’Art Moderne / Centre Georges Pompidou, France; Centre National des Arts Plastiques, France; Fond Régional d’Art Contemporain du Poitou-Charentes, France; Conseil Général de la Seine Saint-Denis, France; Nadour Collection, Germany; Collection of the European Central Bank, Frankfurt; Barjeel Art Foundation, UAE; Zayed National Museum, Abu Dhabi.
