Abdelkader Benchamma

In 2015, Abdelkader Benchamma (1975) was invited by the Drawing Center in New York to inaugurate their mural drawing program with Representation of Dark Matter. In recent years, he has had numerous solo exhibitions: The Power Plant, Toronto (2023, Collection Lambert en Avignon (2022), MRAC de Sérignan (2020), le Collège des Bernardins, Paris (2018), BlueProject Foundation, Barcelona (2016) and FRAC Auvergne (2015). He has taken part in numerous group exhibitions: POLA Museum of Art in Hakone, Japan (2019); Melancholia Fondation Boghossian, Brussels (2018); Tamawuj, Sharjah Biennal, Sharjah (2017); Told, Untold, Retold MATHAF, Doha, Qatar (2010).

Abdelkader Benchamma’s project at Villa Medici is devoted to a subject that has interested him for years: cosmatesque, the singular use of marble which, fragmented in marquetry or placed in symmetry in Italian churches, plays in a disturbing way with our contemporary codes of representation. The forms derived from these mineral veins seem to be neither figurative nor abstract, but evolve in a mysterious in-between. Is this an esoteric system of representation that has survived the centuries, an ancestor of the Rorschach test or an attempt to give substance to what cannot be represented? These are just some of the fascinating avenues explored by the artist in his drawings.