As a professional, Faissal Ben Kiran took his time to concoct “Héritages”. A year of work to create 17 oil painting canvases, each dazzling. Fascinated since his early childhood by the world of women, the artist never ceases to pay homage to them, to sublimate them. Don’t his works bear the names of Anbar, Johara, Marjana, Yakout, Bellara…precious stones in sumptuous caftans, adorned with sparkling jewels?
Each painting seems to tell an enigmatic story. Beyond the portraits celebrating the caftans, their brocades and other Khrib, the jewelry…the plastic universe of the painter is enhanced with objects (ceramics, candlesticks, clocks.), as well as nods to the great Moroccan masters and foreigners, Ben Cheffaj, Melihi, Rabiaa, Giacometti, Niki de Saint Phalle, Jeff Koons…
In addition to the female figures, the exhibition reveals a series of still lifes. Children’s toys, kitchen utensils, various objects that the artist juxtaposes in a playful way not without irony and humor. Beautiful books and other catalogs are placed with caftans or potatoes! All produced with a mastered academic technique celebrating a joyful and confident figuration which ranges from the classicism of Diego Velázquez to the hyper realism of Claudio Bravo.
The “Heritage” exhibition at Eden Art Gallery is “…this link, between real and imaginary, this desired and chosen transmission which is done with strength and serenity inexorably linking a definitively anchored past and a desire to link the latter to a modern present , where wonder remains. » As Ms. Fatim-Zahra Tahiri rightly writes.
Born in 1975, Faissal Ben Kiran obtained his baccalaureate in visual arts in 1995. With a second cycle diploma from the National Institute of Fine Arts in Tetouan, he became involved in teaching and exhibiting since the early 1990s.
“Heritages”, Eden Art Gallery (from November 21 to December 15, 2024)
12, Rue Aïn El Aouda (near Gray Boutique Hotel), Casablanca, Morocco.
