Les Arrivées (The Arrivals)

Achraf Touloub

11 Jun — 11 Sep 2021

Passerelle is hosting the first one-man exhibition by Achraf Touloub in any institution in France. In his work, Achraf Touloub (born in 1986 in Casablanca) strives to think of the initiatory and immersive dimensions inherent in technological tools which, paradoxically, echo the representation strategies of primordial time.

For him, so-called ‘traditional’ art has an immersive dimension that blurs the boundaries between the object observed and the observer. The representations he produces do not function as windows onto the world, but rather as environments giving access to other universes or other states of awareness. According to the artist, one of the great keys to understanding our time consists in “grasping complex and intimate links between the development of technology (especially dematerialisation) and tradition, which both invite us to physical and immersive experiences”.

The artist questions what today constructs and defines the ’real’; he is particularly preoccupied by our relationship with the digital and its influence on our lives. With the Internet, an immaterial universe has already emerged, escaping all regulation but proving increasingly mastered and controlled. Indeed, social networks and the Internet giants dissect our behaviour and intrude into our habitus to anticipate our needs and desires. The real has indeed become partly dematerialised, time has been distended. The invisible has overtaken the visible. HIs work is imbued with this observation which seeks to offer a breathing space from ‘all things digital’. His work slips away from our gaze and demands time to be read. It is also an attempt to return to the essence of art. In an underlying way, Achraf Touloub... [lire plus]

with the support of Plan B, Cluj/Berlin