Kamel Mennour is pleased to present “Magnolias”, a new solo exhibition of French- Moroccan artist Latifa Echakhch.

This time, Echakhch has conceived of a scenario with nostalgic evocations, a recomposed landscape, arti cial and imagined, where the artworks, like fragments of scenery, seem to hang suspended in the di use time of memory and dreams. Echakhch has brought together a collection of new works for the occasion, with a series of large paintings and a oor installation. With them, she evokes images of luxurious gardens and abundant nature.

As with her exhibitions, “L’Air du temps” at the Pompidou Centre in 2013, “Le Jardin mécanique” at the Villa Sauber in Monaco in 2018, and “Romance” at the Fondazione Memmo in Rome—on display until 27 October—, “Magnolias” functions like a poetic scene, into which the viewer is free to wander and project themself. On the oor lie giant, very roughly painted magnolia petals—the petals of those owers of early spring that have barely begun to appear on the tree when they can already be seen scattered on the ground below, as if, through a mirror e ect, to make them bloom. It is an idealised, entropic vision that Echakhch has exaggerated to the point of desacralisation, the technique she uses, which properly belongs to theatre set design, being a rather shoddy one when seen from up close.

The paintings hanging on the walls have been made with black India ink and sepia ink, both commonly used for ink drawing, and which Echakhch has used a number of times before in her work (Tambour, Fantôme, Untitled (sepia)). Applied to very damp canvases, the ink spreads as it is absorbed. Its extremely unpredictable contours seem to escape any attempt at control. e invading shapes evoke both microscopic growths and strange, uncanny rhizomes, which like poetic creepers draw us down into melancholy.