The first exhibition in a series dedicated to showcasing the richness and vitality of contemporary Algerian artists, Industrial Moons brings together several works by Chemsedine Herriche. Living and working in Paris, the Franco-Algerian artist focuses on memories in particular and on forms of archaic resonances that may be shared. His work, playing with ellipses, unfolds like a fragmented narrative, a contemporary story in search of origins.

Chemsedine Herriche approaches the question of images almost as if by chance. Working with an airbrush and applying his work across various mediums, he evokes what could resemble memories—flashes whose contours blur and fade. The projection of paint is both one of the latest techniques developed in the field of art during the 20th century and, at the same time, one of the first gestures associated with wall painting. On cave walls, blown pigments were used to create inverted prints, negative handprints. The artist works with distance, not seeking to constrain color through lines, but rather to create an optical blur — a softness achieved by the intersection of hundreds of tiny droplets. The glow of a sky on a certain day through dust, or the emotion of a woman who, perhaps out of modesty, turns her back to us. He prefers to speak of atmosphere rather than color, not aiming to define a specific period but rather to evoke a sense of the past, an almost universal time where everything that has been lost might be found.

The plaster blocks that Chemsedine Herriche uses might remind one of the amorphous plaster on which frescoes were painted during the Renaissance. They are never complete. The building might already be in ruins; the house is always still being constructed somewhere else. The “Ostraca”, a Greek term referring to fragments of broken pottery, not only designate what has been broken or the process through which certain individuals could be excluded from the city, but they are also drafts, architectural sketches found at excavation sites, for example, in Egypt. This ambiguity nourishes the artist; a fragment always holds within it the promise of a story. Raised in an oral culture, he establishes the connection between the breath on which he steadies his airbrush and the breath of speech that transmits the memory of a family, a community, sometimes through detours, exaggerations, or distortions. Thus, the image is never clear but open to interpretation, much like the different versions the artist can create from the same idea.

Citing Leonardo da Vinci, Chemsedine Herriche recalls that painting is cosa mentale, a mental thing and a vision of the mind. In this sense, the car windshield and the parabola on which he paints maintain a nearly conceptual link with optics. The gaze shifts, and one no longer looks through the windshield but rather into it. The parabola, literally translated into Arabic, is referred to as an Industrial Moon, opening new horizons. As a tool of transmission through space, it literally expands our vision, unfolding a sky, a shared image, a cloud in which to project a few dreams. From Earth to Sky, the hopscotch path accompanies this vertical journey, aiming for an origin — not a point of departure but of new beginnings.