ACHRAF TOULOUB

TREATISE OF METAMORPHOSIS

Volume 1: Manifesto of  necessary invisibilization

Under an unceasing flow of images and, without restraint, neoliberal globalization forces to a permanent unveiling. What remains of the state aligned with large corporations constantly invites us to exhibitionism, which, under the guise of transparency, is merely one of the most refined forms of control.

A.T.’s first solo exhibition at Parliament, “Treatise of Metamorphosis” invites us to rethink the capacity of representation to be autonomous – which is only made possible by its ability to maintain a part of the invisible, which the observer cannot control.

The artworks presented here reflect the paradoxical and political practice of erasure, both individual and collective. Embracing this condition of perpetual motion, each work adopts the flows while generating their own survival tools. Doubling and the merging of forms are approached as an evasion of all predictability of global surveillance. A multiplication of complex interweavings, an encryption to better anonymize ourselves. Its ethereal compositions, appearing and disappearing at will, retain the ironic virtues of a form of escape.

In A.T’s works, no defined pictorial territory exists without an opposing double. Between blood and copper, each composition embodies the force of a flow that passes from one work to another, from one body to another. The fabric is only continually shifting; the motif is self-ornamentating, and no external gaze can fully capture its contours.

The path drawn in space – between staging and ritual – is that of metamorphosis: if the work is in constant transformation, it cannot be entirely grasped. Indeed, there is always an element of disappearance in transformation. Transformation is conceived as a tool for emancipation, and metamorphosis as a state of traversing, in a continuous between.

The escape plays reciprocally for the work and the observer: endowed with a difficult-to-absorb occult aspect, the viewer can only meet the work. In return, a facilitated link is established for the viewer’s own disappearance, understood as a new way of existing within the works. The exhibition thus becomes the precursor to the ritual of collective disappearance.

At the back of the second exhibition room, Galion, referencing the now demolished bar of the Galion d’Aulnay sous Bois, unfolds like a long collective portrait. Nylon and canvas reveal a weave and a motif from touches of ivory black, or the excess of material oozes the play of sutures and cuts, now the drawing and the sculpture. In this remaining synthetic skin lie the intimate traces of an ongoing transformation. In the crevices of the material, one can recognize the figures on the horizon, which have (re)united around the Galion.

Born in 1986 in Casablanca, Achraf Touloub lives and works in Paris. 

Among his recent solo exhibitions are ʿAssabīya, Galeria Plan B, Berlin (2022), Vies parallèles, Blank projects, Cape Town, ZA, Les Arrivées, CAC Passerelle, Brest (2021), Achraf Touloub at Villa Medici, Rome (2020), and Discord Venue, Baronian Xippas, Brussels (2020).

Achraf Touloub has participated in several collective exhibitions, including Liquid Life, Musée Départemental D’Art Contemporain Château De Rochechouart, Rochechouart, Paris (2024), MMCA Cheongju Performing Arts 2023 Relay Performance, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Cheongju, Cheongju (2023), The path guides the meaning, Rebecca Camacho Presents, San Francisco (2023), The Return, MRAC, Musée régional d’art contemporain (MRAC) Sérignan, (2023), Jardin d’Hiver, MCBA, Lausanne (2023), Es-senze, Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo, Venice, IT (2022), Biennale Art Encounters, Landscape in a Convex Mirror, Timisoara (2021), Anticorps, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2020), THE WRATH OF LUDD, BPS22, Charleroi (2020), Baltic Triennial 13: Give Up the Ghost, Tallinn (2018); The World on Paper, Deutsche Bank Collection, Berlin (2018); Night was paper and we were ink, Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah (2018); Lolo’s Entanglements, De Warande Cultural Centre, Turnhout (2018); Auguries, Art Space Geumcheon, Seoul (2017); Viva Arte Viva, 57th Venice Biennale (2017); 100 Masterpieces of Modern and Contemporary Arab Art. The Barjeel Collection, Arab World Institute, Paris (2017); Grafts, Villa Medici, Rome (2017); Mutations-Créations / Printing the World, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2017); Dissolve into a red dwarf, Island, Brussels, (2017); Cher(e)s Ami(e)s: Nouvelle présentation des œuvres de la collection, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2016); Forming in the pupil of an eye, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kochi (2016); Club of Matinee Idolz, CO2, Turin (2015); and Des hommes, des mondes, Collège des Bernardins, Paris (2014).

Achraf Touloub’s works are represented in several public and private collections, including the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Cnap Collection (Centre national des arts plastiques), France; the Deutsche Bank Collection, Frankfurt am Main; and the Sander Collection, Darmstadt.