Via his artwork, Bilal Hamdad transforms the bizarre into the legendary, depicting fresh scenes and positions bathed in a undying and mysterious mild.
In recent times in Paris, non-public finances have invested in former Parisian establishments to become their areas to accommodate fresh works. Crowds flock, for instance, to the Bourse du Trade-Pinault assortment: a former grain marketplace, then a hard work marketplace, reworked by means of Eastern architect Tadao Ando right into a white and delicate area. The similar applies to the brand new Cartier Basis, which was once not too long ago opened, which up to now housed a resort and the Louvre of vintage sellers. The French architect Jean Nouvel transformed it into an enormous museum of recent artwork. Within, it is all blank traces and glass.
The Petit Palais, however, keeps its turn-of-the-century curves and complicated ironwork. It’s non violent, and front to the everlasting collections is unfastened, as in the entire museums of town of Paris. However whether it is an exception within the an increasing number of wealthy inventive panorama of the capital, additionally it is as a result of the originality of the exhibitions it gives.
On this magnificent development, I used to be shocked to find the “intoxication of the modern”, as outlined by means of the poet Charles Baudelaire: “Modernity is fleeting, fugitive, contingent, half of art, the other half of which is eternal and unchanging.”
The ephemeral tournament in query is known as “Panama”, an exhibition of the brand new painter Bilal Hamdad. It brilliantly illustrates the mystical mixture expressed by means of Baudelaire: a contemporary and full of life imaginative and prescient of city existence set a number of the treasures of the museum’s everlasting assortment. The exhibition options 20 of Hamdad’s works, together with two specifically created and impressed by means of the museum’s assortment.
Born in Algeria in 1987 and now based totally in Paris, Hamdad is an ordinary on the Petit Palais, the place he immersed himself within the teachings of significant masters reminiscent of Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin and Edgar Degas. His paintings is encouraged by means of the latter in compositions that constitute on a regular basis existence in fresh towns. Loneliness is a ordinary theme, because it was once for Baudelaire who, like Hamdad, paid specific consideration to town staff striding alongside the quays of the Seine, toolbox in hand (“And dark Paris, rubbing his eyes, grabbed the tool – a diligent old man!”)
In his magnificent large-format oil artwork, we see ladies ready at the subway platform, with baggage on their shoulders, and younger males sitting on railings or railings looking ahead to paintings or a date. We see scenes from the subway go out marketplace, with ladies promoting ears of corn in buying groceries carts, and side road distributors passing by means of hipsters or vacationers with shades and handbags.
Bilal Hamdad was once impressed by means of Edouard Manet’s paintings entitled Un bar auk Folies Bergere (1882). Wikimedia
Even though Hamdad works from images, which he describes as his sketchbook, his works have a intensity and depth that transforms the bizarre into the legendary, casting main points of recent style and place in a undying and mysterious mild. Probably the most enigmatic portray on this exhibition is his refined reinterpretation of Edouard Manet’s 1882 portray The Bar on the Folies Bergère, which is on show on the Courteau Gallery in London.
Within the authentic, Manet performs with the results of a giant tinted replicate at the back of the bar. The replicate displays the again of the waitress who’s gazing some degree outdoor the image, subsequent to the bottles and bowl of clementines at the bar. With this recreation of mirrored image, Manet items the waitress each as an object of our shut gaze and as far away from us, within the type of solitude and vulnerability.
The Serenity of Shadows (2024) by means of Hamdad. Adagp
In Serenity of a Shadow (2024), Hamdad develops Manet’s goal, pushing it additional into the shadows. The foreground, bathed in mild, presentations us the bar, an indication of Manet, with an impressive bowl of oranges and a gentle flower association. Within the background, we will slightly see a bartender in a white blouse, reasonably bent over, clearly drained from his day by day paintings.
The instant is melancholic, withdrawn, however echoes with the hum of a contemporary town. This portray hangs, like several of Hamdad’s artwork, within the center of the Petit Palais’ eclectic galleries, opening a window right into a time that combines previous and provide. And on this discussion between previous and new, the viewer right away realizes that this paintings is right here to stick.
“Panama” by means of Bilal Hamdad is gifted on the Petit Palais in Paris till February 8, 2026.
