Almine Rech Brussels is pleased to present Corridors, Fabien Adèle’s first solo exhibition with the gallery.

In his East-Paris studio, Fabien Adèle chose to use a narrowed palette of colours for this new set of paintings. Their complementary shades of warm browns ranging from orange ochre to burnt sienna, along with lighter, more intense blues, underline the space where his twelve oils on canvas are displayed.

The painting of the young French artist (born in 1993), which has only been shown on rare occasions, is populated by singular protagonists. His human figures, with their stoic and frozen expressions reminiscent of antique statues, are immersed in interiors or landscapes that are both ethereal and bewitchingly luminous. Take the woman seated on a chair, her head slightly tilted forward, or the two female busts with endless hair, bathed in the aquatic element and staring into the distance to bluish halos suggesting the horizon at sea. Or perhaps the man leaning on a table, his hand barely resting on his cheek, his mouth half open, his garment fading into an incandescent sky. Seen from the front or back, these beings and their nebulous surroundings come together in paintings of the psyche and interiority that appear keen to suspend the passing of time.

– Charles Barachon, writer and art critic.