Fiction-Rayon Bleu

Abdelkader Benchamma has built throughout the years a corpus of work that oscillates between graphic

design and contemporary drawing. His works take as reference classic drawing, scientific modeling and comics, as well as Japanese vignettes, painting and literature. Benchamma’s drawings have undergone different transformations as a result of a deep reflection and experimentation on volume, mass and metamorphosis. They are dynamic drawings delicately executed that explore the representation of different states of matter. Events explode off the page. In his scenes he reveals the purity and intensity of lines to express powerful and ambiguous atmospheres which probe notions of a stable reality. Benchamma uses varied techniques to explore the constructed aspect of reality, inspired by cosmology, science fiction, literature, and existentialist theatre.

Born in 1975, Abdelkader Benchamma lives and works in Paris and Montpellier. He recently exhibited his work at the Collège des Bernadins for the 2018 Nuit Blanche all-night arts event in Paris. Winner of the 2015 Drawing Now prize, the same year the New York Drawing Center invited him to inaugurate a mural drawing program with the Representation of Dark Matter, a monumental piece created on-site (2015-2016) curated by Joanna Kleinberg Romanow. In 2011 he was part of the exhibition The Future of a Promise, curated by Lina Lazaar, a collateral event of the 54th Venice Biennial. In recent years, his work has been showcased by numerous solo exhibitions, including at the Centquatre in Paris (2018), BlueProject Foundation in Barcelona (2016), FRAC Auvergne in Clermont-Ferrand (2015) and Carré Sainte Anne in Montpellier (2014). In 2017 he has participated in the Sharjah Biennial.