Signs and Wonders

This spring, Abdelkader Benchamma returns to the Galerie Templon for his fourth solo show, Signs and Wonders. Subtly playing with changes of scale and pareidolia, the artist transforms the surface into a vibrant space where currents, figures, turbulence and cosmic or interior landscapes unfold. Long associated with black and white and ephemeral installations, he is now asserting color in ambitious new formats, on the edge of painting and fresco.

Nourished by literary, ethnographic and esoteric influences, Benchamma draws on a vast corpus of images and texts that he has been collecting and enriching for years. The works presented here are inspired in particular by the Kitab al-Bulhan(Book of Wonders), a 14th-15th-century Arabic manuscript attributed to Abd al-Hasan al-Isfahani, where astronomical observations, magical talismans and figures of jinn coexist in a vision of the world where the visible and invisible intertwine. They are also in dialogue with the Book of Miraclesa 16th-century German collection of biblical stories and apocalyptic visions, where celestial phenomena become omens and threats.

Conceived as the pages of a vast manuscript, the exhibition transforms the gallery into a moving organism, criss-crossed by passages to other worlds. Twinkling stars, drones and UFOs seem to merge here, replaying our ancestral fears of the unknown and contemporary accounts of extraterrestrial threats. Between anxiety and a desire for re-enchantment, Signs and Wonders marks a turning point in the career of the artist, who will begin a residency at the Villa Albertine in September 2026. Villa Albertine in New York, exploring in particular the archives of the American Society for Psychical Research, devoted to parapsychological phenomena, thus extending his investigation into the forms and figures of the invisible.