Youcef Korichi's Darkly Lyrical Paintings at Galerie Suzanne Tarasiève

Youcef Korichi's exhibition at Galerie Suzanne Tarasiève in Paris, from January 12 to March 2, 2013, confronts viewers with a massive blue dumpster, stained with white marks like sea foam, setting a tone of catastrophe. The paintings depict faceless men suffocating under plastic tarps in nondescript spaces, their hands choreographed like requiem notes. Faces emerge as survivors of revolutions and disasters, wrinkled and unshaven, yet calm. Despite the grimness, Korichi introduces lightness: a transparent tarp fluttering in a dirty corridor becomes silk, and chlorophyll-green leaves hint at sky. The exhibition is meticulously hung, with gray, green, and black tonalities, and plaster rubble on the floor. Critic Léa Bismuth notes the criminal doubt lingering between canvases.