OMAR
MAHFOUDI
DANS LA MAISON
AFIKARIS | PARIS
November 9 2023 - December 9 2023
Omar Mahfoudi plunges the spectator into a domestic setting, interweaving memories and fantasies. Is the visitor entering a replica of the artist's lair or a romanticised version of his 'home'? The same ambiguity - between reality and fantasy - emerges from the faces that inhabit his works: anonymous figures, they exude a strange familiarity. The presentation plays with this feeling of déjà vu, challenging our landmarks by questioning the notions of what is real and what is fake.
CE QUE NOUS DONNE LA TERRE
AFIKARIS | PARIS
July 6 2023 - Sep 23 2023
The group show Ce que nous donne la terre (What the Earth Gives Us) is a call to pay attention to our environment, its mutations and the depletion of its resources - marking the end of a period of abundance. Omar Mahfoudi instils in his work the idea of a mystical exile: a desire for communion with nature,
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I WAS DREAMING OF THE PAST
L'ATELIER 21 | CASABLANCA
Jan 24 2023 - Feb 24 2023
Sketches along the water. A balance, perhaps temporary, appears to have been found by Omar Mahfoudi between pattern and technique. Waterscapes respond to the dilution of colors that, in rare inks on paper, manage to vibrate nature. But a concern often arises, through out-of-the-box plans suggesting possible drowning. Nostalgia, whose art is summoning ghosts, is perhaps at this price. The exhibition "I was dreaming of the past" is to be discovered at Atelier 21 in Casablanca
- Olivier Rachet
THE FORGOTTEN BRANCHES
AFIKARIS | PARIS
Dec 16 2022 - Jan 14 2023
7 Rue Notre Dame de Nazareth
75003 Paris
FRANCE
The Forgotten Branches presents an ensemble of works standing like a tree of memory. Each one embodies a branch of the artist's thoughts. Thus, the visitors are immersed in the reminiscence of Mahfoudi's mind, witnessing his souvenirs within this forest that one calls memory.
ART COLOGNE
Rodolphe Janssen | Cologne, Germany
16-20 November 2022
Over the past years, Omar has looked at the world from a political and humanistic point of view
and this is the reason why figurative work is less and less important. His work around the notion
of void led him to consider much more abstract elements. Omar plays with presence and
absence, figuration and abstraction. Between the two, the gesture guides his art. It is born from
random movements created by the ink, that he dissolves in water. Death traces left on paper
or canvas, emerging landscapes and imaginary characters. He has recently been exploring new
plastic avenues and works on larger formats to experiment with new techniques.
1-54 LONDON ART FAIR 2022
AFIKARIS | LONDON 2022
13-16 October 2022
Omar Mahfoudi questions our relationship to the environment alongside the very notion of identity. His work emerges as a result of his personal reflections and feelings. On the border of abstraction, his paintings express a mystical, almost metaphysical exile. Carried by his memories, Mahfoudi paints liquid landscapes crossed by isolated characters immersed in a meditative state. Sometimes, they stand out from the landscape and engage in a monologue. On the white page, the faces are drawn in close-up. They emerge, like ghosts, from the depths of the artist’s memory - from his dreams, perhaps? Imaginary figures, they nevertheless resonate within each of us, taking on the familiar features of an old friend. To that extent, Mahfoudi’s art is an invitation to introspection and rethinking a more harmonious ecosystem.
BAD+ ART FAIR 2022
AFIKARIS | BORDEAUX 2022
7-10 July 2022
Omar Mahfoudi proposes a series of floral and melancholic portraits. There is a call to nature emerging from the paper. A call to come back to the origin of the world, to rethink the universe facing its instability. Behind his work, an ecological consciousness arises. He initiates, throughout, the idea to side with nature.
ARTGENÈVE 2022
AFIKARIS | GENEVE 2022
Omar Mahfoudi's (b.1981, Morocco) timeless territories bathed in a distant light and conducive to reverie, are fed and enriched by eclectic influences: from the Amazonia series by photographer Sebastiao Salgado, to the prints of Katsushika Hokusai. Ultimately, gold impregnates his imagery with heat and mystery.
1-54 PARIS 2022
AFIKARIS | PARIS 2022
Omar Mahfoudi proposes a series of works on paper - including floral and melancholic portraits. There is a call to nature emerging from the paper. A call to come back to the origin of the world, to rethink the universe facing its instability. Behind his work, an ecological consciousness arises. He initiates, throughout, the idea to side with nature.
EL DORADO
AFIKARIS | PARIS 2021
"El Dorado", is an invitation on a trip to nowhere, offering an infinite number of possibilities at the discretion of the visitor. If the wandering silhouettes inside Mafouhdi’s canvases pose the questions: what are they looking for? What is your utopia? Thus, through these waving lands, horizons of Japan, South America, and his native Morocco, "El Dorado" composés an initiatory Odyssey, a path through the limbos of our unconscious, toward a spiritual exile.
1-54 LONDON ART FAIR 2021
AFIKARIS | LONDON 2021
Beyond rethinking the world as it is, Omar Mahfoudi imagines a parallel universe. He plunges the viewer into another realm inspired by the memory of his life in Tangier, as well as the temptation of a spiritual exile. His oases, timeless territories bathed in a distant light and conducive to reverie, are fed and enriched by eclectic influences: from the Amazonia series by photographer Sebastiao Salgado, to the prints of Katsushika Hokusai. Ultimately, gold enriches his imagery with heat and mystery.
WAITING IN THE OASIS
AFIKARIS & AMA COLLECTION | CAP FERRET 2021
La Cabane du Mimbeau
Le Cap Ferret
The Waiting In the Oasis exhibition offers a parenthesis to urban agitation, through landscapes echoing the exceptional backdrop of Cap Ferret, with "sand and water" between dunes and ocean.
QUITTER LA VILLE
AFIKARIS | PARIS 2021
In the context of the current international health crisis, leaving the city appears to be an escape route. If a time existed where cities embodied endless possibilities, they could reveal to be suffocating, objects of boredom, isolation and even danger. The health, ecological and economic situation also stirs this temptation of an urban exodus.
However, the city and its torments inspired generations of artists. Some of them - from the impressionists Monet and Caillebotte, to the street artists who thrive in city centers. Photographers such as Andreas Gursky or Michael Tsegaye and Andrew Esiebo document and play with the mutations of urban space, its harmony as well as its chaos. Others, like Houston Maludi, are mesmerised by its meanders and fascinated by the rhythm of its architecture. If the city feeds the imagination, it is also a source of alienation. Cameroonian painter Jean David Nkot illustrates this relation of domination between the territory and the body in ”The Shadows of Space” series. Here, the city erases the faces of those who dreamed of it.
The exhibition “Quitter la Ville” deviates from the bustle of the city, offering a complete immersion into the welcoming and lush nature depicted by Omar Mahfoudi. Nature embodies an ideal. Omar reinterprets the world and the other captures the “mystical beauty” with his brushes and explores this “flower boy”: sensitive being, a symbol of humanity and joy, who conveys hope and optimism.