A Unique Artistic Exploration at Villa des Arts
Ilias Selfati's latest exhibition, "Papers Blooming in a Forest," runs from August 11 to September 30 at the Villa des Arts in Rabat. This captivating showcase invites viewers into a suspended space where the narrative of painting is not simply referenced but is actively reinterpreted through successive shifts. Rather than positioning Henri Matisse as a fixed reference or model, Selfati invokes him as a point of condensation—a dynamic origin that remains open to reconfiguration. This exhibition refrains from offering a historicist reading or a genealogical approach; instead, it opens a field of relationships wherein painting is contemplated through its own deviations.
Between Matisse and Selfati lies neither a direct lineage nor a stark break, but rather a fragile contact zone where two distinct practices, separated by time, interrogate what painting can signify today. In this context, painting is maintained as a critical experience, not merely as an affirmation of a language but as a testing of its own limits. Matisse's stay in Tangier in 1912 serves not just as a historical event but as a critical moment in the formation of a modern gaze. Selfati reinvests this moment as a projection surface, a place where painting can once again confront its own conditions of emergence. Rather than looking directly at Matisse, Selfati positions himself within an interval where their practices can resonate without ever completely overlapping.
Redefining the Role of the Window in Art
In this innovative approach, the window is redefined to serve an operative function. It transforms from a mere opening to the world into a condition of possibility for the gaze itself. Building on the perspectival constructions inherited from the Renaissance, Selfati deactivates the window as a tool for spatial mastery, turning it into a site of indecision—a threshold where the distinctions between inside and outside lose their relevance. Selfati's works emerge through a process of densification, where the pictorial surface is organized not around a central motif but as a field of intensities, allowing forms and figures to emerge without being pinned down. Consequently, certain presences traverse the entirety of the artwork without ever being fully identifiable, embodying an elusive desire for emergence that straddles memory and projection, reminiscence and invention. The focus shifts from mere recognition to persistence, maintaining an open capacity for transformation.
In Selfati's drawings, often more immediate than his paintings, instability manifests in its raw state, with the line acting as a tension line, an attempt at grasping something that perpetually eludes capture. The paintings absorb these lines, thickening, covering, or allowing them to surface, constructing layers where the visible emerges through accumulation and erasure. His three-dimensional pieces extend this movement without ever solidifying it. They do not merely illustrate the paintings but relocate the discourse into space, transforming what was an uncertain appearance on the canvas into an ambiguous volume—an object that asserts presence yet remains elusive. Forms reminiscent of the living, particularly animal and plant-like figures, appear without being assigned a precise identity. These recurring figures circulate among various media, suggesting they belong to a continuously transforming reservoir of images. In this light, Selfati's work becomes a site of formation, even transformation, not merely showcasing a world but constituting its very possibility.
As reported by aujourdhui.ma.
