OUT OF THE SHADOWS: MOHAMED SAÏD CHAIR

  • MOHAMED SAÏD CHAIR

    SOLO EXHIBITION
    OUT OF THE SHADOWS
  • Mohamed Saïd Chair: Youth in Dissonance In a paradoxical gesture, the painter Mohamed Saïd Chair both elevates everyday Moroccan life...

    Mohamed Saïd Chair: Youth in Dissonance

     

    In a paradoxical gesture, the painter Mohamed Saïd Chair both elevates everyday Moroccan life to the stature of history painting and, in a move worthy of Caravaggio, pulls that very grandeur down from its pedestal. A discerning eye will immediately detect, in the artist’s three large-scale canvases, echoes of iconic masterpieces. 

  • A thousand miles away from any Orientalist or Orientalizing aesthetic that essentializes bodies and perpetuates classical or academic idealization -...
    A thousand miles away from any Orientalist or Orientalizing aesthetic that essentializes bodies and perpetuates classical or academic idealization - and against the grain of much contemporary Moroccan painting, which rarely lingers on ordinary lives - Saïd Chair’s canvases cast the spotlight on those whom Edmond Rostand, in L’Aiglon, called “the small, the obscure, the rankless”: building or parking attendants wearing the same fluorescent vests as security guards at shopping malls, delivery drivers astride their motorbikes, a prostitute in tight leather trousers and gleaming red ankle boots, idle young men and women clad in standardized sportswear brands. If this painting is romantic, it is so in its own way: in its reworking of chiaroscuro drawn from Baroque aesthetics, or in its more expressionist play of shadow and light. In a small-format canvas with a tight frame, the arm of a man in a fluorescent yellow jacket emerges from darkness; his disproportionate hand provokes a quiet but palpable unease.
     
    • Figurative painting by Mohamed Saïd Chair, contemporary Moroccan artist. His works reinvent the human figure through a chiaroscuro aesthetic inherited from 17th century oil painting, blending hyperrealism and modern sensibility. AFIKARIS Gallery, contemporary African art in Paris. Peinture figurative de Mohamed Saïd Chair, artiste marocain contemporain. Ses œuvres réinventent la figure humaine dans une esthétique du clair-obscur héritée de la peinture à l'huile du XVIIe siècle, mêlant hyperréalisme et sensibilité moderne. Galerie AFIKARIS, art contemporain africain à Paris.
      Mohamed Saïd Chair, The gamblers, 2024-2025
    • Figurative painting by Mohamed Saïd Chair, contemporary Moroccan artist. His works reinvent the human figure through a chiaroscuro aesthetic inherited from 17th century oil painting, blending hyperrealism and modern sensibility. AFIKARIS Gallery, contemporary African art in Paris. Peinture figurative de Mohamed Saïd Chair, artiste marocain contemporain. Ses œuvres réinventent la figure humaine dans une esthétique du clair-obscur héritée de la peinture à l'huile du XVIIe siècle, mêlant hyperréalisme et sensibilité moderne. Galerie AFIKARIS, art contemporain africain à Paris.
      Mohamed Saïd Chair, Sans titre, 2025
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    • Figurative painting by Mohamed Saïd Chair, contemporary Moroccan artist. His works reinvent the human figure through a chiaroscuro aesthetic inherited from 17th century oil painting, blending hyperrealism and modern sensibility. AFIKARIS Gallery, contemporary African art in Paris. Peinture figurative de Mohamed Saïd Chair, artiste marocain contemporain. Ses œuvres réinventent la figure humaine dans une esthétique du clair-obscur héritée de la peinture à l'huile du XVIIe siècle, mêlant hyperréalisme et sensibilité moderne. Galerie AFIKARIS, art contemporain africain à Paris.
      Mohamed Saïd Chair, Sans titre, 2025
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    • Figurative painting by Mohamed Saïd Chair, contemporary Moroccan artist. His works reinvent the human figure through a chiaroscuro aesthetic inherited from 17th century oil painting, blending hyperrealism and modern sensibility. AFIKARIS Gallery, contemporary African art in Paris. Peinture figurative de Mohamed Saïd Chair, artiste marocain contemporain. Ses œuvres réinventent la figure humaine dans une esthétique du clair-obscur héritée de la peinture à l'huile du XVIIe siècle, mêlant hyperréalisme et sensibilité moderne. Galerie AFIKARIS, art contemporain africain à Paris.
      Mohamed Saïd Chair, Le couloir, 2025
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    • Figurative painting by Mohamed Saïd Chair, contemporary Moroccan artist. His works reinvent the human figure through a chiaroscuro aesthetic inherited from 17th century oil painting, blending hyperrealism and modern sensibility. AFIKARIS Gallery, contemporary African art in Paris. Peinture figurative de Mohamed Saïd Chair, artiste marocain contemporain. Ses œuvres réinventent la figure humaine dans une esthétique du clair-obscur héritée de la peinture à l'huile du XVIIe siècle, mêlant hyperréalisme et sensibilité moderne. Galerie AFIKARIS, art contemporain africain à Paris.
      Mohamed Saïd Chair, Sans titre, 2025
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  • MOHAMED SAÏD CHAIR WAS BORN IN 1989. HE LIVES AND WORKS IN TANGIER, MOROCCO. A self-taught artist, Mohamed Saïd Chair...
    MOHAMED SAÏD CHAIR WAS BORN IN 1989. HE LIVES AND WORKS IN TANGIER, MOROCCO.

    A self-taught artist, Mohamed Saïd Chair began his career in finance before fully dedicating himself to his passion for painting. Driven by a fascination with humanity and its representations, he has developed a practice centered on portraiture, deeply influenced by the raw and introspective expression of Lucian Freud.
     
    His work, executed primarily in oil, demonstrates a sharp attention to anatomy and bodily detail. With variations of drapery, use of verdaccio, and precise rendering of volumes, Chair draws on the legacy of the old masters — from the Italian Renaissance to Flemish and French classical painting — to revive academic techniques in the service of profoundly contemporary themes, such as modern alienation, mass culture, and the impact of social media on our perception of the individual.
     

  • I approach each work as if directing a scene. The canvas is never the beginning—it’s the final moment. Each image holds a movement suspended in time, where the body becomes language.
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