20 years of painting

Although this title evokes a painter’s retrospective exhibition, Fayçal Baghriche reframes this notion of painting by presenting several large-scale painted canvases which have function as walls on which to hang and show art in the French art centre: Le Quartier for the past 20 years. These large canvases were removed for the exhibition, which preceded Baghriche’s solo show. The artist asked that they be returned to their original positions. Routinely sanded and repainted for each exhibition, they bear the marks of their manipulation. The folds and cracks that appear on these large grey or white monochromes reveal the successive layers of paint applied by the art centre over the years. The cracks make visible the paint’s relationship to time and become witnesses to the progressive transformation of the space in which these canvases stand.