From the face to the grid, from colour to material, Abdellatif Lasri has spent more than forty years developing a distinctive body of work in which abstraction becomes a means of exploring the human experience. With The Imprint of Time, so.art gallery presents a retrospective dedicated to the Moroccan artist, bringing together works created between 1983 and 2025. This exhibition traces the evolution of his pictorial language, the enduring nature of his artistic investigations and the transformations of a visual universe shaped by the observation of the world and the intensity of inner experience.
Born in Casablanca in 1957, Lasri has lived and worked in Paris since 1978. This exhibition marks an artistic return to his hometown and offers an opportunity to rediscover a career forged outside conventional boundaries. Across several decades of artistic practice, he has developed an approach to painting that prioritises expression, experimentation and freedom of gesture, without ever separating formal exploration from its human dimension.
Material occupies a central place in his work. Using a palette knife, Lasri applies, moves and layers paint, transforming the canvas into a tangible record of the creative act. His colours, at times bold and contrasting, at others worked through translucent layers, interact within compositions where the tension of lines meets the spontaneity of gesture. From this interplay emerge shifting balances, visual rhythms and a depth that gradually unfolds before the viewer.
Throughout his career, certain motifs recur, evolve and acquire new meanings. Faces, reduced to their essential lines, suggest a plurality of identities and question what distinguishes each individual beyond outward appearance. Grids and compartments, meanwhile, evoke the organisation of modern life, its points of connection, but also the divisions it imposes. Shutters, with their overlapping lines, introduce another dimension: that of what remains concealed, of an inner world that eludes us, and of the boundaries between the visible and the inaccessible.
These forms do not constitute a fixed repertoire. Their evolution reflects an ongoing investigation in which each new variation renews the possibilities of painting. Lasri's abstraction is distinguished by its ability to evoke a human presence without necessarily resorting to representation. Beneath the structures, contrasts and accumulations of material emerge feelings of solitude, intimate tensions and impulses of life that transcend individual experience.
The Imprint of Time invites viewers to consider how an artwork takes shape, transforms and retains traces of its own evolution. Variations in technique, shifts in colour and changes in gesture make the passage of time perceptible, while the persistence of certain motifs reveals the coherence of a deeply personal artistic practice. The canvas becomes a space where lived time, the memory of gesture and the necessity of beginning again converge.
By bringing together works spanning more than four decades, so.art gallery offers a cross-sectional reading of Abdellatif Lasri's artistic practice. This retrospective reveals the richness of a career that positions painting as both a space for questioning and a sensory experience. It is an invitation to discover a multifaceted body of work in which artistic freedom opens onto a universal reflection on the individual, their environment and their place in the world.