Abdelkader Benchamma imposes constraints upon his process to create delicately executed and dynamic drawings of states of matter. His drawings take their inspiration from visual scenarios that stem from reflections on space and its physical reality, its limits and its zones of contact with mental space. They operate with diversions, modulating objects to testify of possible malfunctions in our relationship with the other and with things. Shifting of reality, intrusion of the invisible, indeterminate matters undergoing transformation, minuscule catastrophes are at the heart of Benchamma’s work.
Inspired by many different thought processes, that go from science to esotericism, from literature to history of art, the artist creates artworks with uncertain boundaries, and whose movement destabilises the visitor by playing namely with the codes of figuration and abstraction. These organic ensembles can make us think of landscapes, not in the traditional sense of the term but more because the flow they outline brings to mind the movement of natural elements, like air, clouds, earth, space. Often using black and white for its simplicity and graphic strength, the artist develops a language through which he gets the visitor to doubt of the reality of his/her perception, by making him/her penetrate into unstable, dynamic and elusive worlds. Moving matter that enveloped us at the Drawing Centre in New York (2015-2016), a cave animated by a furious circular vortex at the Sharjah Biennial (2017), these installations, that one could call metaphysical, question our relationship to what is imperceptible, infinite and invisible. His works were also included in Future of a Promise, a Pan Arab exhibition during the 54th Venice Biennale, Told / Untold / Retold at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, and Constantine, Capital of Arab Culture festival in Algeria. Recipient of the Paris-based The Drawing Now Prize, he was also nominated for the Le Meurice Prize in 2015. In 2018, he presented a solo exhibition at the CENTQUATRE-PARIS.
1975 Born in Mazamet, France
Lives and works Montpellier and Paris, France