The artist Omar Mahfoudi (Tangier, 1981) presents himself for the first time in Italy, at the CAR gallery in Bologna, with the solo exhibition Existences dispersed in the liquidity of an indeterminate space, curated by Andrea Busto. This Garuttian title announces and frames the painter’s practice: we witness an ethereal dimension, in which human figures and nature dissolve between livid purple and palliative indigo.
Omar Mahfoudi, “Esistenze disperse nella liquidità di uno spazio indeterminato”, photo by Manuel Montesano, courtesy CAR Gallery, Bologna
Numerous references to European art can be tracked down in Mahfoudi’s style – Busto compares him to Caspar David Friedrich, Emil Nolde, and J. M. William Turner, among others – and of these artists one can indeed detect the magnetism of the sign, vibrant subjects, misty visions and the extraordinary nature of the ordinary. The paintings exhibit drains of twilight, chromatic voids that emit an intense gravitational pull, mirrored dawns sprouting from uncertain soils, and evanescent epiphanies of people and unspoiled landscapes. The creative material of this world seems to liquefy on the surface of the painting, flowing and enveloping the canvas like molasses.
Omar Mahfoudi, “Esistenze disperse nella liquidità di uno spazio indeterminato”, photo by Manuel Montesano, courtesy CAR Gallery, Bologna
In addition to painterly suggestions, a literary one also arises, particularly the poem L’erica by Antonia Pozzi[1]: «[…] / In the woods / to my animalistic restlessness / that nibbles hazelnuts / you offer the livid heather of the dead / and my clouded love / polishes / washes of acidic tears». Pozzi and Mahfoudi never crossed paths, yet they seem to view the world through similar eyes. There is a palpable emotional gravity, a density of pathos that permeates the paintings: existential tears water suspended atmospheres; flora and fauna coexist in the ecosystems of this pictorial universe as if they were clinging to one another to avoid being torn away from reality. Still, one wonders about the intentions of the figure protruding from nature. Is it waiting for the viewer? Is it walking away from them? Is it vanishing or appearing? When did this ambiguous event of apparition and disappearance begin? Will it ever end?
Omar Mahfoudi, “Faces 2”, 2024, liquid acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30 cm”, photo by Manuel Montesano, courtesy CAR Gallery, Bologna
«[…] It is it who, departing from the scene, like an arrow, pierces me[2]». This is how Roland Barthes defines the concept of punctum, and it is the same sensation through which Mahfoudi’s human figures draw in the observer – a sentient capture within the indeterminate space of his paintings. Yet, unlike the way Barthes’ carries on, Mahfoudi’s punctums do not wound or seize. Instead, they envelop and catalyze the viewer, guiding them slowly until they delve into his fluid realm. It is in the silent and piercing gaze that one finds the sensitive point of these figures: a certainty amid elusive environments and bodies. Another constant in his practice is the poetic of the imperceptible that captivates. When the Moon Calls (2025) is an example: two focal points enchant the gaze – the full moon and a figure immersed in the liquidity of an undefined space. Mahfoudi’s origins resurface in this recent work, activating a game of inquiry sparked by the encounter between viewer and pictorial space, where one searches for a human presence poised between the intangible and the revealed – a fixed point amid the waves of a sublunar landscape.
Omar Mahfoudi, “Blue Flower Boy”, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 80 x 80 cm”, photo by Manuel Montesano, courtesy CAR Gallery, Bologna
In the evolution of his poetics, the human figure appears increasingly closer, larger, as if it had gained trust in the viewer, or perhaps as if it were better able to embrace the uncertain inner world from which it emerges. In Blue Flower Boy (2023), a presence both hieratic and auratic captures whoever stands before it. Its bait? Once again, an ambiguity between absence and presence, so powerful that it dissolves even the clear boundaries between the body’s physicality and the proliferating nature that envelops it. The exhibition Dispersed Existences in the Liquidity of an Indeterminate Space unfolds as an experience of rarefied and seductive painting, where one can contemplate mysterious atmospheres and deceptive techniques, along with the poetics of an artist whose style consciously avoids the “orientalist” label. Ultimately, what emerges is a profound care for the work of Omar Mahfoudi – shared by both curator and gallerist.
Ayleen Ivonne Liverani
[1] Antonia Pozzi, Acqua Alpina. Poesie 1929-1933, 2023, Pungitopo Editrice, Messina
[2] Roland Barthes, La camera chiara. Nota sulla fotografia, 1980, Piccola Biblioteca Einaudi, Torino, p. 28
Info:
Omar Mahfoudi. Esistenze disperse nella liquidità di uno spazio indeterminato
curated by Andrea Busto
22/05 – 26/07/2025
CAR
via Azzo Gardino, 14/a – Bologna
https://www.cardrde.com/
Ayleen Ivonne Liverani, a cultural practitioner in the fields of edu-curatorship and mediation, works between Italy and Mexico and explores the art world as a space for exploration and questioning, and as an opportunity to create and narrate alternative imaginaries.
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