Jacques Fhima: PARALLEL

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Parallel follows in the footsteps of a young man’s meandering in the urban fringe of his native city of Paris. His path follows a long-standing tradition of urban flaneurs. His journey starts at the Librairie Parallèles book store, and continues with a sleuth’s hunt through the city’s mausoleums, passages, and flea markets. There, Fhima is swept off on adventures in dark cinema halls, which for him are parallel universes expanding his consciousness and rousing him to embark on a cinematic and photographic journey of his own.

In his work, Fhima beckons viewers to read between the lines and images; to identify and distinguish between real elements and imagined motifs which come together to build an alternate history. As a whole, his body of serial works and installations simultaneously explore his personal biography, immigration in Europe in the 20th Century, Paris as the cradle of modern culture, and the evolution of fringe culture as a narrative running parallel to dominant narratives dictated by prevailing power structures through an endless excess of images.

Fhima’s path tracks alongside the established art world, as an outside artist who does not align with the art world’s precepts. Fhima’s art school is everyday life, randomness, the urban environment. His materials remain exposed in his work, directly pointing at their sources of inspiration – objects and items left along the road after exhausting their utility: anonymous letters, photographs, old films, and postcards.

In the central space of the gallery we find pages taken from fanzines, edited and printed in stencil or photocopier. The pages are adorned with poetic correspondence with Parisian streets and Fhima’s mentors: European comics artists, Andre Breton and his fellow surrealists, Guy Debord and his situationist milieu.

The collection of film rolls at the center of the exhibition is transformed into an urban construct encapsulating time and movement, and the casual wanderer’s footsteps and gaze. The projection at the end of the gallery calls viewers into a cinematic world emerging from the darkness and existing in that gap between dream and reality. On the second floor, we find objects from Fhima’s rare European comics collection displayed alongside works founded on a physical and conceptual dialogue between Fhima and those comics artists who inspired him.

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Curator: Gaby Hamburg Fhima

Director & Chief Curator: Tamar Gispan-Greenberg

Producer: Noa Weiss Simon

Thanks to The Print House