Join Farah Atassi and Mark Rappolt, Editor-in-Chief of ArtReview, in conversation at Almine Rech, London on 10 October, 6pm
On the occasion of Atassi’s exhibition The Lost Hours, opening at Almine Rech London on 7 October through 9 November 2024, join the artist and ArtReview Editor-in-Chief Mark Rappolt for artist talk ‘Species of Spaces’ on 10 October at 6pm.
Venue: Almine Rech, Grosvenor Hill, Broadbent House, W1K 3JH, London
Date: Thursday 10 October
Time: 6pm
Featuring: Farah Atassi, artist and Mark Rappolt, Editor-in-Chief of ArtReview
‘Farah Atassi’s pulsating compositions range from still life to the mechanical ballet and, more recently, the relationship between the model and the artist. Yet no model has ever posed for Atassi. Instead, she plays with the archetype of a model. Created in Atassi’s mind out of an art historical vocabulary, the figures in her spellbinding works are all made up. Appropriating a vocabulary of geometric, pared-down modernist forms and references, her paintings are unshackled from any representational logic.’
‘On closer inspection, it becomes evident that few models are actually at work. With their eyes shut or cast down, the figures are steeped in reading, sleeping on a divan or resting, curled up in an armchair. The languorous, soft spills create an impression of ease that differs from the way models are traditionally portrayed. Atassi explains that she paints models “in abstracto, outside the desire of the painter”. This is a time of their own. Figures are caught in the suspended, “lost hours” that give the exhibition its title and signal a departure. As she invites the viewer to share these intimate moments, Farah Atassi’s works convey a sense of tranquillity and harmony.’
— Devika Singh, senior lecturer in curating at the Courtauld Institute of Art
Born in 1981 in Brussels, Farah Atassi lives and works in Paris. her work draws its inspiration from both ornament and modernism, developing a pictorial language based on the stylisation of her drawings, muted colors and a cubist conception of space. Winner of the Prix Jean-François Prat in 2012, she was nominated for the Prix Marcel Duchamp in 2013.
Her work has been shown at the Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Palais de Tokyo and Musée national Picasso-Paris. Her work is included in the collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, the Fondation Louis Vuitton – LVMH, the Marciano Collection in Los Angeles and the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, among others.
