Achraf Touloub creates richly saturated oil paintings that hover in the in-between. Using a blending technique that emphasizes brush strokes and the mixing of multiple colors simultaneously, the artist both creates and obscures form, with Touloub’s paintings at times communicating vast landscapes or granular microbiomes. As the edges of each plane blend into one another, the artist nudges our eyes in a dance around the canvas, searching for a resting place amidst seemingly endless striations of light and dark, warm and cool.
Born in 1986 in Casablanca, Morocco, Touloub lives and works in Paris. The artist’s work was included in the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017, the Baltic Triennial 13 in Tallinn, Estonia in 2018, and Kochi-Muziris Biennale in Kochi, India in 2016. Solo exhibitions and projects include the Centre d’art contemporain Passerelle, Brest, France; Villa Medici, Rome, Italy; Plan B, Berlin, Germany; Galerie Albert Baronian, Brussels, Belgium and has been featured in group exhibitions at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France; Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo, Venice, Italy; Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE; and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France. Touloub earned his MFA and BFA from the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, France in 2013 and 2011 respectively. His work is held in collections worldwide, including the Barjeel Art Foundation, the Deutsche Bank Collection, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Foundation Claudine et Jean-Marc Salomon.
