Paysages a circadiens

I start from the premise that everything exists in nature and that we are within it.
Hicham Berrada

For his first exhibition at the galerie kamel mennour, Hicham Berrada transforms the space into a sensorial landscape. The temperature, the light and dark, the blue sky and the night, the images and scents of flowers all appear and steal away, fade and spread, immersing the visitor in a unique experience. This scripted environment at the crossing of science and poetry, of intuition and knowledge, is based on an inverted temporal mechanism: the artist upsets the climatic conditions and the circadian rhythm of plants to create three landscapes, Azur, Céleste and Mesk-ellil2.
Hicham Berrada stages chemically activated changes and metamorphoses in his work; in so doing, he invites the visitor to experience the unique energies and forces emanating from the matter he utilizes. At the Villa Medici (September 2013-August 2014), he extended his research by creating enclosed worlds from elemental matter and bits of landscape from ore. We can see the results of this work in Azur, a suite of canvases bathed in cobalt that explores changes in the ore’s state. Overwhelmed by heat, the cobalt transforms into a vibrant material – in this extraordinary moment of pictorial metamorphosis from one state of matter to another, a big, pure sky gradually rises to the surface of the canvas. Whether this aerial landscape stabilizes or takes flight depends on the temperature: when warm, the blue spreads, and when cold, it dissolves somewhat. From the blue to the light, this partition in two – which differs from painting to painting – evokes the sun’s path towards the horizon. The cerulean reverie unites the ore and the light, the earth and the sky, and the terrestrial ore becomes a sort of inverted star, “a light from the earth”. Yet this connection is not symbolic – it is a testament to the richness of this world buried secretly in the earth, and to this “energetic work of hard substances” that, as Gaston Bachelard says, comes to life in “promised beauties3”. The artist continues to focus on this mysterious unity of matter and the heavens in the video Céleste. A thick blue smoke constituted of refined ore takes flight, moves about, and melts into a gray sky. Light is given body, the sky is colored. A fragment of blue sky gradually appears. In the thick of this aerial landscape filled with minerals, Hicham Berrada offers us “the calm to imagine” a new blue.
Faced with these two landscapes, Hicham Berrada invites us below, to a reverie of essences. In a blue light, he devises a chiaroscuro garden where nature presents itself to us in the darkness and secretly releases its subtle scents. This botanical theater in which nature and artifice mingle takes the form of a glass pavilion with alleys of mesk-ellil (‘night musk’). This delicate flower, this five-petal star, displays its white beauty in the day. At night, in the blue of the evening, it opens, straightens up, and emits its ester. Sensual and sweet, zesty and enchanting, its scent speaks to us all night long. The work thus invites visitors to take the path from which the perfume emanates. The artist lyrically manipulates the climatic parameters and the circadian rhythm to create this environment: in the day, an artificial darkness falls on the little biosphere; in the evening, horticultural lighting provides the plants with the necessary illumination. A veritable dream factory, this transfiguration of day into night, the inversed life of these flowers, and the profusion of perfumes awaken the senses and emotions as they transport visitors from the gallery space to somewhere beyond.
Poetic and illusory, this small parcel of a world constitutes a closed ecosystem together with Azur. Indeed, each contributes to constitute the other. The humidity emanating from the plants below acts on the environment of Azur and the heat from the paintings above affects the garden in turn. This exhibition divided into successive, cross-fertilizing scenes invites visitors to take a poetic voyage in time and space, to a world both alive and inert, to unknown regions where nature, matter, and creation meet.

© Mouna Mekouar

The circadian rhythm is the set of biological events that occur every 24 hours in living organisms.
2 The vernacular for Cestrum nocturnum in the Maghreb.
3 Gaston Bachelard, La terre et les rêveries de la volonté [Earth and Reveries of Will], Paris, Librairie José Corti, [1948] 2004, p. 13.

Paysages a circadiens - © © ADAGP Hicham Berrada
Photo. archives kamel mennour
Courtesy the artist and kamel mennour, Paris/London, Mennour
Hicham Berrada
*Azur*, 2014-2015
300 g Arche paper on frame, cobalt chloride, resistance, glass
60 x 50 x 19 cm
View of the exhibition "Paysages a circadiens", kamel mennour (6 rue du Pont de Lodi), Paris, 2015 - © © ADAGP Hicham Berrada
Photo. archives kamel mennour
Courtesy the artist and kamel mennour, Paris/London, Mennour

Hicham Berrada
Azur, 2014-2015
300 g Arche paper on frame, cobalt chloride, resistance, glass
60 x 50 x 19 cm
View of the exhibition “Paysages a circadiens”, kamel mennour (6 rue du Pont de Lodi), Paris, 2015

Hicham Berrada
*Celeste*, 2014
Color video. Grey sky, sky blue smoke
5 min 55 s
View of the exhibition "Paysages a circadiens", kamel mennour (6 rue du Pont de Lodi), Paris, 2015 - © © ADAGP Hicham Berrada
Photo. archives kamel mennour
Courtesy the artist and kamel mennour, Paris/London, Mennour

Hicham Berrada
Celeste, 2014
Color video. Grey sky, sky blue smoke
5 min 55 s
View of the exhibition “Paysages a circadiens”, kamel mennour (6 rue du Pont de Lodi), Paris, 2015

Hicham Berrada
*Mesk-ellil*, 2015
Installation
Ensemble of 7 stained glass terrariums, cestrum nocturnum, horticultural lighting, moonlight lighting, delay
250 x 200 x 50 cm each
250 x 500 x 500 cm overall - © © ADAGP Hicham Berrada
Photo. archives kamel mennour
Courtesy the artist and kamel mennour, Paris/London, Mennour

Hicham Berrada
Mesk-ellil, 2015
Installation
Ensemble of 7 stained glass terrariums, cestrum nocturnum, horticultural lighting, moonlight lighting, delay
250 x 200 x 50 cm each
250 x 500 x 500 cm overall

Hicham Berrada
*Mesk-ellil*, 2015
Installation
Ensemble of 7 stained glass terrariums, cestrum nocturnum, horticultural lighting, moonlight lighting, delay
250 x 200 x 50 cm each
250 x 500 x 500 cm overall - © © ADAGP Hicham Berrada
Photo. archives kamel mennour
Courtesy the artist and kamel mennour, Paris/London, Mennour

Hicham Berrada
Mesk-ellil, 2015
Installation
Ensemble of 7 stained glass terrariums, cestrum nocturnum, horticultural lighting, moonlight lighting, delay
250 x 200 x 50 cm each
250 x 500 x 500 cm overall

Hicham Berrada
*Mesk-ellil*, 2015
Installation
Ensemble of 7 stained glass terrariums, cestrum nocturnum, horticultural lighting, moonlight lighting, delay
250 x 200 x 50 cm each
250 x 500 x 500 cm overall - © © ADAGP Hicham Berrada
Photo. archives kamel mennour
Courtesy the artist and kamel mennour, Paris/London, Mennour

Hicham Berrada
Mesk-ellil, 2015
Installation
Ensemble of 7 stained glass terrariums, cestrum nocturnum, horticultural lighting, moonlight lighting, delay
250 x 200 x 50 cm each
250 x 500 x 500 cm overall

Hicham Berrada
*Mesk-ellil*, 2015
Installation
Ensemble of 7 stained glass terrariums, cestrum nocturnum, horticultural lighting, moonlight lighting, delay
250 x 200 x 50 cm each
250 x 500 x 500 cm overall - © © ADAGP Hicham Berrada
Photo. archives kamel mennour
Courtesy the artist and kamel mennour, Paris/London, Mennour

Hicham Berrada
Mesk-ellil, 2015
Installation
Ensemble of 7 stained glass terrariums, cestrum nocturnum, horticultural lighting, moonlight lighting, delay
250 x 200 x 50 cm each
250 x 500 x 500 cm overall

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