Renaissance

Galerie des Bains and Galerie Pagès are pleased to be collaborating for the first time with the Montresso Art Foundation to present to you: « Renaissance » a solo show by Wahib Chehata

Based in Marrakesh, Morocco, Montresso Art Foundation was founded to support creation and diversity in artistic research. Their residency “Jardin Rouge” gives artists the possibility to work on personal artistic projects and be a place of exchange and sharing, a true creativity laboratory.

The exhibition Renaissance is Wahib Chehata’s first solo show in Switzerland. The French-Tunisian photographer is inspired by different sources such as religious themes and symbols of the Renaissance, emotions and mystery of Romanticism as well as the chiaroscuro techniques of Caravaggio. He brilliantly balances the morbid and the sublime and combines Orientalism and Christian mythology with contemporary technology.

Light is the main factor in the Renaissance Serie, where he decontextualizes famous Christian scenes by using strangers, not for their dramaturgy, but to embellish their faces and their body language. These scenes were captured in Africa where he travelled from Senegal to Mali. In his still-life Serie “Resilience” he interprets the vicissitudes of life through dead and motionless flesh, he sanctifies the memory of suffering in a scenario frozen in time.

Wahib Chehata has an undeniable fascination for classical painting, which has influenced his work. He builds his photographic portraits as paintings, waiting patiently to catch the perfect light, such striping the subject of all racial, social or ethnical considerations. He grasps the weight of the bodies and the souls and gives the individual a new humanity. His work is shaped by the encounters, influences and exchanges that he experienced and where he challenges the artistic standards.