Souvenir

source: artnews

Though simple in design, even poker-faced art-goers were exclaiming like children over Fayçal Baghriche’s rapidly spinning Souvenir (2012). As I overheard a gallery assistant explain to one such enchanted visitor, “Yep, it’s just a regular globe, but with a motor.” Baghriche is known for playing with what a press release calls “principles of image rhetoric,” such as subtraction, inversion, or acceleration, and this work accordingly redirected more than a few conversations that entered its orbit.
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source: taymourgrahne

Born in Algeria in 1972, Paris-based artist Fayçal Baghriche grew up navigating between Arab and Western cultures, forming his artistic perspective characterized by the blurring of distinct cultural lenses. By illuminating the simplicity of movement and modifying image fundamentals, his craft creates a body of works that challenges the frameworks of society.

Baghriche’s performances, installations and photographs emulate scenes from daily life, illuminating the stereotypes of both human conduct and expression. He introduces slight discrepancies to unveil the instinctive nature of language and behavior, distancing what is considered an ordinary reality. Calling upon poetry and humor, the artist shapes his practice by embodying a precise state of mind, which he aims at the stimulation of critical thought.
Baghriche received a Fine Arts diploma from La Villa Arson, Nice, a B.A. in Dramatic Arts from Sophia Antipolis, Nice, and an MA in Multimedia Creation from the National School of Fine Arts, Paris. His work has been shown in numerous exhibitions in France and internationally. He has participated in Brooklyn Euphoria, New York, and Dashanzi International Art Festival, Beijing. He has shown his work in Outpost for Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Bielefelder Kunstverein, Germany; Al Riwaq Art Space, Bahrain and The Museum of Modern Art of Algiers, Algeria. He was included in La force de l’Art in 2009, and took part in Nuit Blanche, Paris, and Le Printemps de Septembre, Toulouse. In 2010 he exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art Paris, Museum of Contemporary Art Bordeaux, and Fondation Vasarely in Aix-en-Provence. In 2011, he was part of The Future of a Promise, at the 54th Venice Biennale.
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source: frestassescsporgbr
O termo Souvenir,que intitula a obra do artista Fayçal Baghriche, contraria, à primeira vista, o uso comum da palavra, vinculado a ofertas de objetos com origens longínquas em relação às pessoas que os recebem. Enquanto se distancia de convenções e da mercantilização da lembrança, a obra desconsidera o deslocamento do sujeito pela terra como uma experiência a ser atestada com a aquisição e a oferta de pequenos objetos, produtos da indústria turística e cultural. Assim, longe de ser um objeto de determinado local, a obra de Fayçal apresenta o próprio globo terrestre como souvenir. Sendo autoiluminado, ao mesmo tempo em que se movimenta em seu próprio eixo, o objeto desvirtua aquilo que aparentemente busca representar. Daí o fato de uma luz interna, associada ao rápido movimento produzido pela motorização do globo, ser a responsável por abstrair qualquer linha fronteiriça. Ao favorecer a luminosidade interna de um planeta, que é pura escuridão, a obra deixa em segundo plano o valor da representação e favorece um conjunto de ideias desconexas com o real. Nesse sentido, Souvenir é um meio de reconsiderar de que modo as demarcações que definem o cenário geopolítico desse ínfimo globo se perdem na infinita rotatividade da terra. Ao transformar a presença do globo, o artista argelino, radicado na França, sugere o convívio com a ideia de distante vizinhança. Desse modo, algo o leva a considerar um mundo que insiste em manter viva a sua natureza mais elementar: um infinitesimal planeta situado na Via Láctea, cuja idade aproximada é de treze bilhões de anos, e a vizinhança é marcada por centenas de bilhões de planetas, cujas dimensões fazem da terra um belo grão de areia situado nesta galáxia. O souvenir poderia ser entregue a alguém de Júpiter e serviria como o objeto que se oferta a alguém ao chegar de uma viagem. Ao que alguém poderia dizer: “Olá, passei pela Terra e lembrei de você. Trouxe este souvenir. Vejam como é singelo este pequenino planeta.”
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source: frestassescsporgbr
At first sight, it would seem that the word Souvenir,which entitles the work by artist Fayçal Baghrige, is not used in its normal sense, linked to the offer of objects from far away places in relation to the people who receive them. While it is distanced from the conventions and merchandising of memory, the work disregards the movement of the subject over the surface of the earth as an experience to be attested by the purchase and giving of small objects, products of the touristic and cultural industry. Thus, far from being an object from some specific place, Fayçal’s work presents the terrestrial globe itself as a souvenir. Being self-lighted, at the same time that it rotates on its own axis, the object distorts that which it apparently seeks to represent. Therefore, the presence of an inner light, associated with the rapid movement produced by the globe’s motorization, is responsible for abstracting any border line. By fostering the internal luminosity of a planet, which is pure darkness, the work relegates the value of representation to a second level and gives rise to a set of ideas disconnected from the real. In this sense, Souvenir is a means of reconsidering in what way the demarcations that define the geopolitical scenario of this tiny globe are lost in the Earth’s infinite rotativity. By transforming the globe’s presence, the Algerian artist, a residence of France, suggests the idea of a distant neighbor relation. Something thus leads him to consider a world that insists on maintaining its most elementary nature: an infinitesimal planet situated in the Milky Way, whose approximate age is 13 billion years, while the neighbor relation is marked by hundreds of billions of planets, whose dimensions make the Earth a lovely grain of sand located in this galaxy. The souvenir could be delivered to someone on Jupiter and would serve as the object that is offered to someone upon returning from a trip. In which case someone could say: “Hi, I stopped by Earth and thought about you. I brought this souvenir. Look how simple this tiny planet is.”
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source: slash-paris

The singular Fayçal Baghriche’s artistic process is to reveal strangeness and poetry of our daily practices by questionning the relevance of normative systems that regulate both public area and collective social behaviours. By working with easily identifiable objects and videos that are collected, intermixed and manipulated with humor and simplicity, he tries to defeat our reflexes and hability to identify those common objects : this is an invitation to re-think more critically the very concept of identity, collective or personnal, and the everyone’s quest to belong to a singular politic, social or religious membership.
In the past 10 years, Fayçal Baghriche has exhibited widely across the world : Brooklyn Euphoria in New-York, Dashanzi Art Festival of Beijing and Biennale of Gwandju and of Dakar. His work has also been exhibited in the Huston’s Contemporary Art Museum, Outspot for Contemporary art of Los Angeles, Bielefelder Kunstverein in Germany, Al Riwaq Art Space Bahrein, Modern Museum of Alger, Delfina Foundation (London, 2012), Vögele Kultur Zentrum (Switzerland, 2014), Villa Empain (Brussels, 2013) and BrotKunsthalle Wien (Austria, 2012).
In France, his works have been presented in Villa Arson in Nice, the CAPC in Bordeaux, the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, the Vasarely Foundation and the Centre Pompidou (2013). He also participated to the triennale « La force de l’art » (Paris, 2009), « La Nuit Blanche » (Paris) and the « Printemps de septembre » (Toulouse). In 2011, he was part of the exhibition « The Future of a promise » during the 54ème biennale of Venice.