Mokhtar Djaafer

Mokhtar Djaafer is a painter and Algerian engraver , born on April 1st 1953 with Sétif.

Biography

Mokhtar Djaafer attends 1978 with 1982 the School of the Art schools of Algiers (interior Decoration). Of 1979 with 1981 it carries out frescos in various towns of Algeria (Algiers, Blida, Bou-Ismael, Berar) then from 1981 of installations of interiors of public places in Algiers then in Paris. It continues its studies of 1982 with 1987 at the School of Decorative Arts of Paris (Interior architecture). In 1984 it starts to practice zincography by using metal powders, printing itself its plates for a number limited of tests each single time in their coloring. It carries out in 1986 a fresco for the Festival of Peace (Gilded Door, Paris). It obtains in 1988 the diploma of 3rd degree of the School of Decorative Arts of Paris (Movable) and arranges in 1993 with Saint-Germain-in-Bush hammer a restaurant for which it creates several hundreds of original ceramics squares.

Personal exposures

1987: Algerian arts center, Paris (text of Hamid Tibouchi). Gallery PAES, Orleans. 1988: F.I.A.P., Paris. 1989: Gallery Head of Art, Grenoble. 1990: Museum Adzak, Paris (texts of Marina Dulbecco and Michel-Georges Bernard). 1992: Free-Algerian religious organization, Grenoble. 1993: Tammouz gallery, Brussels. 1996: Klaa gallery, Bremen. 1997: Gallery of the Port, Ciotat.

Collective exposures

1985: Algerian arts center, Paris. 1986: Art and Création , F.I.A.P., Paris. 1987: C.R.D.P., Orleans. Art and Création ; F.I.A.P., Paris. 1988: International Art off Today Exhibition , Budapest; School of Decorative Arts, Paris (movable); To live 88 , the Villette, Paris (movable). V.I.A., Paris (movable); Trade union of the Luminary , Paris (movable). 1989: F.G.E., Antony; Living room of New Realities, Large palace, Paris; FIAC, Large palace, Paris (movable); Castle of Blandes, Sassenage (Grenoble). 1990: Gallery Head of Art, Grenoble; International A.R.P.A. , UNESCO, Paris. 1991: Museum Adzak, Paris; Gallery Head of Art, Grenoble; Arts center of the Visitation, Périgueux. Osaka Triennial 91 , Ōsaka; Djaafer, Slatni, Tibouchi , Day Open doors, Antony. 1993: Impressed hope, Homage to Tahar Djaout , Space Freedom, Crest. 1995: Glares of Algerian culture , Center European of Poetry, Avignon. 1998: reg.' Art of Algeria and France , House of the Dance, Lyon. 2003: 6th triennial world of the print , Chamalières (text of Michel-Georges Bernard).

Sources

Djaafer File, in Algeria Literature/Action n° 12-13, Paris, October 1997.

Testimony

“I work in the same way my painting, where I use also paper, the adhesives, coatings. Engraving and painting are for me the same experiment, there is junction between the two. The difference it is that work direct in painting, is reversed in engraving. It is as if I would enclose, in my painting, matter of a plate. And reciprocally the plates of my engravings once encrées for the impression are like paintings. The step is the same one. And as in engraving I do not reproduce identical tests mechanically, like I draw my engravings with some specimens only, all different, they are tests each time single, like paintings. With measurement I transform them. With inking I can densifier the matter or to reduce it, to pass from a strong pulling, sinks, with a more ventilated pulling. I can also re-use, to work over again my plates. I always want engraving alive…”

Mokhtar Djaafer, I always want engraving alive… , maintenance, in Algeria Literature/Action n° 12-13, Paris, October 1997 (p. 242).

Judgments

“As many Maghrebian plastics technicians (let us quote the Cherkaoui Morrocan and the Algerian group Aouchem), Mokhtar Djaafer will be interested in certain signs of the soil and the inheritance (Arab penmanship, Berber reasons). A desire of “ressourcer”, to recover its memory and its culture, indeed pushed many painters with réapproprier certain original written forms. This intrusion of the identity sign in the dynamics of the fabric was illustrated with various happinesses, according to whether obedience prevails passivates or the flight of fancy which does not hesitate to hustle the reference marks. Mokhtar Djaafer, for example, is not really worried to affirm an identity (...) What interests it, it is the movement and the sensitivity of a writing, the graphic potentialities of an alphabet. Moreover, this “semiotic” dimension is rather furtive in its work. It has about the same function and the same statute as the drawing which intervenes not like a figuration, a finality in oneself but just to test the possibilities and the nuances of materials, to give a human expression to the broken matters, to confront the bent eyes, the mouths fitted latticework on with the faded colors, the secular placidity of the growing old parchments, or papyrus where time crossed out the least trace of the cry and violence. ”

Tahar Djaout, Which does it remain after the cry? Engravings of Mokhtar Djaafer , in Topicality of the emigration , Paris, January 15th, 1987; Algiers, Algeria-Topicality , n° 1345,25- July 31st, 1991.

“Djaafer engraves and paints like the mineral dash and vegetable maturations do not finish any, on surface of the rocks and the barks, with deaf banks of the saltworks, to register the skin bruissante to be it. Under the auroral gleam of the geneses which it recreates on its plates by building powders and sands, its gesture returns, in on this side dubious silhouettes of the things, in the secret flow of the faults and gullies in which the innumerable matter disperses everywhere around the diffuse writings of the presence. With more close, on the most motionless beaches of the duration, which makes surprise Djaafer, it is then the outcrop of the moving palimpsest which in each moment composes and recomposes indefinitely the world. ”

Michel-Georges Bernard, in 6th triennial world of the print , Chamalières, 2003

Internal bond

contemporary Algerian Painting

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