Artist to Watch: The Ethereal Canvases By This Emerging French Talent Explore the Elusiveness of Memory
Djabril Boukhenaïssi speaks with Jacoba Urist to discuss how his atmospheric paintings explore the fragile and reconstructive nature of memory, for Galerie Magazine. Working with layered oil paint and pastel, the artist creates blurred figures and luminous scenes that hover between fiction and reality. Boukhenaïssi likens painting to the act of remembering—both involve reconstructing fragments and accepting distortion.
Trained at Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis and École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, his practice combines careful layering with acts of erasure that introduce chance and translucency. Following a recent exhibition at our Chicago gallery, his work will appear in two group exhibitions in southern France: one at MO.CO. Montpellier Contemporain and another at Musée d’Art Contemporain de Marseille as part of the ADIAF Triennial. Boukhenaïssi also cites literature—particularly Virginia Woolf’s novel The Waves—as a key influence on his exploration of memory and loss.
