RAPHAËLLE BENZIMRA | Aller au désert
In situ 12 March 2026 - 18 April 2026Philippe Jousse and the team at Galerie Jousse Entreprise are pleased to present Raphaëlle Benzimra’s first solo exhibition, Aller au désert, from March 12 to April 18, 2026.
In this new body of work in oil on wood and canvas, the artist offers a contemporary interpretation of the figure of the hermit and the voluntary solitude of saints in their mystical quest. The exhibition is accompanied by a text by Raphaël Bories, historian and curator at the Mucem.
“In a desert, a hermit set out, beyond aridity and sun, in search of a presence greater than itself. In a damp, cold cell, a mystic composed incandescent verses in the dark. In a ring, a fighter stepped forward, alone amid the crowd, facing her opponent. On the white surface of her wooden panels, Raphaëlle Benzimra carefully lays down the brilliance of pure colours.
To paint is to fight. Against the inertia of the surface, with the history of art, against the indifference of the world, with one’s own demons – like those that artists have depicted in tales of saints’ temptations or Japanese yōkai. Yet it is a struggle that destroys nothing. Instead, it creates, transforming solitude into a gesture of love addressed to whoever is willing to receive it.
Saints and stars, heroes of asceticism and of the ring alike, all stand side by side in these enclosed spaces where a passage towards the infinite opens. Qur’anic interlacings blend with colours still resonant with the memory of Byzantine mosaics; geometric and stylised forms summon the strange fantasy of reality in the sky, the landscapes and the stands. Light refracts here as it does in the golden backgrounds of icons. The sound of the colours of past centuries meets that of the Dominican merengue, the flag of which becomes an angelic adornment; the material flashes of the past mingle with those of our everyday life: skulls and earrings, crucifixes and sunglasses.
Most of the paintings gathered here are small in scale. They invite proximity: an intimate, almost tactile encounter, a kind of bodily engagement. Like an illuminated manuscript that one opens, closes, and returns to, they encourage meditation – the slow rumination of the image. One approaches, observing the cut surfaces of flat colour, the certainty and doubt in the faces, the iconographic attributes resurfacing from the past. One steps back, recognises a narrative, a memory and plunges into a dense symbolism, whether familiar or unknown. When one moves away from these paintings and then returns to them later, something has shifted – within them or perhaps within ourselves (it is no longer entirely clear).
These images are like one-way mirrors, in which we glimpse familiar, admired, distant figures – and sometimes, behind them, our own reflection. Such is the ancient magic of painting: it gives body to things, to stories, to absences, to the past and the present, to convictions and uncertainties. It allows us to come face to face with ourselves, to find ourselves together before the icons of our time or of another, in that shared solitude that is the gaze cast upon a painting.”
Raphaël Bories
Translation by Sadie Fletcher
Image: Raphaëlle Benzimra, The Demon of Sadness, oil on wood panel, 16.5 × 21.5 × 1.2 cm, unique piece. Photo: Max Borderie.
Press release (PDF)Vernissage : 12/03/2026 4:00 pm
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