PLUNGE AND COUNTER-PLUNGE IN PAINTING
Photorealistic in appearance, Youcef Korichi's painting never fails to fascinate, as much for its virtuosity as for the strange apparent banality of its subjects.
Déclinaisons de Grilles (2017), Ciel, Sol caillouteux ou frondaisons (2018), Pieds ou draps froissés, benne à gravats et trottoir défoncé, Écorces et ronds dans l'eau... Here we are confronted with pieces of reality that are so many pieces of bravura as the trompe-l'œil rendering creates an illusion.
But make no mistake: for the artist, "The real subject is painting. That which gives itself to be seen, and which gives us to see what, without it, we would probably not see...
However, we can't help discerning "tragic contemporary icons " 1 in his series of Grids, thorny bushes(Griffes, 2018) and other barriers occupying the entire canvas space, just as his fantastic draperies(Nature morte, 2011; Odalisque, 2014 and Être dedans, 2015) appear as icons of solitude. While the works in his latest series, inspired by Francisco de Goya's Pantin (El Pelele) painted in 1791, inevitably evoke the tragic fall of man. Is it the tragedy of a human being dreaming of an afterlife, but condemned to live here on earth, subject to gravity? Damned or modern Icarus, Korichi's puppet is dressed in a suit. Isolated and tumbling under a cloud-laden sky, far from the carnival figure heckled by the women in Goya's country scene, he may also remind us of the silhouette jumping from the top of a building in Andy Warhol's dark 1963 silkscreen Suicide , or Yves Klein's 1960 Saut dans le vide.
From the fall
Shadows and protrusions of folds, bulges, creases, traces of wear and tear...: from the shine to the matte finish of the costume fabric, which is glossy in places, and the leather of the shoes - whose soiled soles are rendered in a masterly, vertiginous contrapposto - Youcef Korichi's maniera commands admiration. Using the ancient technique of "mise au carreau" to reproduce, by enlarging them, the smallest details of his photographic "documents", the painter works from two to five months on his often monumental canvases... So it's easy to understand why you might be taken in by the meticulousness and accuracy of the rendering. Seeking to render the tactility of materials, "the sensation of being touched by paint and by the eye", and to "mix several ways of painting in the same picture " 2, Korichi once again demonstrates his dexterity in his latest series, on the borderline between the tragic and the grotesque, through the amplitude of his gesture, ranging from ultra-precision to slackness and impasto. For example, the very airy aspect of the clouds contrasts with the density of the folds in the clothes of the puppet launched into the air and finally crashing to the ground.
1 - Baptiste Brun / cnap.fr/youcef-korichi-de-front
2 - Quoted from an interview with the painter on February 14, 2024
Born in Constantine, Algeria, in 1974, Youcef Korichi graduated from ENSBA in 1999, and trained in Jean-Michel Alberola's studio before studying art history at university. He lives and works in Paris.
"Youcef Korichi - The Blue of the Sky
Suzanne Tarasiève Gallery
7, rue Pastourelle, Paris 3e
March 16 to April 27, 2024
"Youcef Korichi
Cloister Saint-Louis, Avignon
March 5 to 27, 2024
