
Chourouk Hriech - I See a Bird / Je vois un oiseau
Drawing Lab, Paris
Curated by Jérôme Sans
17.03 - 15.06.2022
The exhibition I See a Bird is the site of multiple narratives, a succession of "drawn journeys" where real or fictional landscapes in mutation merge. Connected to each other in a fluid and borderless environment, the birds are our guides. Free and autonomous, they embody the issues of line, trajectory, flight, the practice of the world and the landscape that run through the work of the French-Moroccan artist Chourouk Hriech (1977). Inspired by the behaviour of these migrants, the artist explores this figure as a witness to our own relationship with our environment and an indicator of the ecological crisis, particularly through the disappearance of certain species.
For the Drawing Lab, Chourouk Hriech deploys a metaphorical geography linking Bangkok to Casablanca, Tokyo to Marseille, a world-city whose first inhabitants are birds. His kaleidoscopic visions telescope in a space entirely taken over by black and white drawings, which extend from the scale of a sheet of paper to that of a wall, as well as in immersive installations and videos. A rich journey that encourages reverie and wandering, as well as a physical and mental experience of space, metamorphosed into a "new environment": here the animal, human and plant kingdoms merge with the stratifications of cities and landscapes.
Designed to echo the dramas that unfold in the skies, forests, plains, marshes, ponds and cities, the exhibition invites the viewer to navigate through life-size fables made up of mixtures and coexistences of forms, cultures and eras, but always in touch with reality.
"Drawing is, in a way, an ecosystem [...]. It is a world within the world of representation."

Chourouk Hriech - I See a Bird / Je vois un oiseau, Drawing Lab, 2022, © Nicolas Brasseur

Exhibition view, Chourouk Hriech - I See a Bird / Je vois un oiseau, Drawing Lab, 2022, © Nicolas Brasseur

Exhibition view, Chourouk Hriech - I See a Bird / Je vois un oiseau, Drawing Lab, 2022, © Nicolas Brasseur

Exhibition view, Chourouk Hriech - I See a Bird / Je vois un oiseau, Drawing Lab, 2022, © Nicolas Brasseur

Chourouk Hriech - I See a Bird / Je vois un oiseau, Drawing Lab, 2022, © Nicolas Brasseur

Chourouk Hriech - I See a Bird / Je vois un oiseau, Drawing Lab, 2022, © Nicolas Brasseur

Chourouk Hriech - I See a Bird / Je vois un oiseau, Drawing Lab, 2022, © Nicolas Brasseur

Chourouk Hriech - I See a Bird / Je vois un oiseau, Drawing Lab, 2022, © Nicolas Brasseur