Dossier [PDF]

CAR Gallery is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition in Italy of Moroccan-born artist Omar Mahfoudi (Tangier, 1981. Based in Paris). On the occasion of his first exhibition with CAR Gallery, Mahfoudi presents a series of works that encapsulate the essence of his artistic exploration in recent years. The exhibition is curated by Andrea Busto, in collaboration with Afikaris gallery in Paris.

Omar Mahfoudi grew up not far from the Detroit Tangier, where he discovered painting within his family circle and drawing through personal experiments. But it was at the age of 12 that young Omar developed his eye and his technique at the Catholic school in Tangier, where he took part in art history and plastic arts courses. After having long proposed compositions marked by the presence of the materials, Omar Mahfoudi turned to the fluidity of liquid acrylic and ink, favouring compositions that play on the border between figuration and abstraction.

Omar Mahfoudi’s boundless admiration for cinema is perceptible in his work as much by the references that are slipped in as by the games of framing, colourimetry and luminosity present in his pictorial work. His life experiences, personal research and his cultural knowledge feed his poetic and humanistic creations.

Omar Mahfoudi plays with presence and absence through the emptiness that fills his works with a mystery, alongside a form of existential solitude. His compositions can be distinguished sometimes by lush vegetation, sometimes by a desert biome, sometimes by disturbing shadows, sometimes by soothing figures. They unfold in a faded atmosphere, oscillating between lost paradise, melancholic twilight and unfathomable night.

Thus, in this constant balancing act between presence and absence, figuration and abstraction, tension and appeasement, Omar Mahfoudi composes a painting that is both oxymoronic and cinematic.

His work has been featured in international exhibitions and events. In 2025, Afikaris gallery in Paris dedicated a solo exhibition to him producing the catalogue ‘Waiting for the light to change’, the artist’s first monographic publication, which gives a representative overview of his work to date and documents the recent exhibition at the gallery.