Djabril Boukhenaïssi, A night with O.R., 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Mariane Ibrahim.
On the occasion of Once upon a midnight dreary, please join us on Saturday, November 15 at 12 p.m for a conversation between French painter, Djabril Boukhenaïssi and Editor-in-Chief of Poetry magazine, Adrian Matejka. Taking the exhibition Once upon a midnight dreary as a point of departure, this conversation will explore Boukhenaïssi’s poetic investigations into the darkness of night as both subject and metaphor; reflecting on how the night, once a realm of mystery and imagination, has been eroded by modern light pollution and how this loss reshapes society.
Drawing from literary and philosophical references including Baudelaire, Novalis, Rilke, and Max Milner, Boukhenaïssi’s palette of deep blues and mauves activate abstraction through opacity and illumination. His canvases transform the shadows of night into a site of memory and imagination, asking what emerges under the moonlight when the visible gives way to the unseen. This show marks the artist first solo presentation in the United States, and the first with the gallery.
SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES:
Djabril Boukhenaïssi (b. 1993, France; lives and works between Paris and the Perche region) explores the threshold between reality and fiction through painting. Drawing from literature, philosophy, and Romanticism, his work examines night as a symbol of solitude and imagination. He relies on sketches rather than photographs, layering pastel and oil to create dreamlike, semi-abstract compositions. Boukhenaïssi studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, the Universität der Künste in Berlin, and holds a degree in philosophy from Paris 8 University Vincennes–Saint-Denis. In 2023, he received the inaugural Lee Ufan Arles & Maison Guerlain Art & Environment Prize.
Adrian Matejka is the author of seven books, most recently the graphic novel Last On His Feet: Jack Johnson and the Battle of the Century which was selected as one of the 10 best books of 2023 by the New York Public Library and was a finalist for the 2024 Eisner Award. His new book Be Easy: New & Selected Poems is forthcoming in March 2026. Among Matejka’s honors are fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and a Simon Fellowship from United States Artists. He served as Poet Laureate of the state of Indiana in 2018-19 and is editor-in-chief of Poetry magazine.
Noviembre 11, 2025
