“Stasis” a solo exhibition of Algerian Painter Bardi at rhizome gallery

For its inaugural exhibition, rhizome invites Algerian artist Bardi from November 07, 2020 to January 16, 2021 for the exhibition «Stasis».

With his foray into the world of painting Bardi paints a picture of our societies, reflecting without indulgence on what man does to himself and his socio-cultural environment.

From its inception, his pictorial world has been populated by strange and grotesque characters. His animals and entities that float and hover in space shamelessly displaying their deformities and their mocking gazes. Laughing at the world, ironic, they carry the vanity, arrogance, ambition, pride and other aspirations of men. A certain sense of humor, however, mitigates the harshness of this irony and a tenderness shine through what is at times harsh criticism. There is a tenderness for human weakness which Bardi derides as if to defuse the drama of reality.

Stasis is the title chosen by the artist for this exhibition the strength of the works of which lies in their ability to lay bare the contradictions that run through and disturbs our lives. By Stasis the Greeks designated a political, moral and social crisis resulting from a conflict internal to a city-state (the Greek Polis). It is also the name of the god who embodies civil war and disagreement among a people. That is what Bardi’s work is about: those historic moments that shook the daily lives of thousands of people.

Algerians—whom Bardi represents with suffering bodies—spread out, dismembered at the same time human and monsters. Sensitive to the socio-political conflicts that have invaded the world today, in his recent works, where the beauty and the ugliness of men are intertwined, Bardi charges these grotesque works of art with the critical role of provoking a reaction in the viewer at once comical, bitter and anxious. They constitute a dissent from the usual classical moral, the socio-cultural and aesthetic standards that, as a result, they call into question.¹ Excerpt from the text by Nadira Laggoune- Aklouche, art critic and independent curator.

Founded in 2017, Rhizome has continued to evolve as a non-physical space for three years. The “rhizome” model as a cultural institution was initially inspired by rhizomatic thought developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. A concept which apprehends multiplicities, in opposition to the hierarchical and arborescent conception of knowledge. It sees culture and the arts as a map or a wide range of influences and fosters a nomadic system of growth and dissemination. This conception has never had more meaning and relevance than in the context (local and global) in which we are currently living, that of the movement.

The artist readily acknowledges that he exists “… in derision and caricature» which is the only way for him to «sublimate the present» and express a position towards the political, social or cultural context. Admittedly, his works are inhabited by deformed human figures that can be interpreted as a provocation because they are deliberately ambiguous, but this vision of the real carries an expression of social disappointment. These disarticulated, deformed, mutilated bodies are those «of the people I meet every day. These are the tired bodies of Algerian workers in whose faces that I see expressed only weariness and dull eyes as if everyone is waiting for the messiah.”

Excerpt from the text by Nadira Laggoune- Aklouche, art critic and independent curator.

To find out more about rhizome, please visit the gallery page on Artskop and gallery’s website.