BOUSTANE MOHAMED

Born in Casablanca in 1960, Mohamed Boustane is a visual artist calligrapher. His works are created on paper canson, skin and cedar.

In his permanent quest "to see in the letters", he starts from the tradition but "retraces, renovates, recreates".

Its activity also extends to the participation and the animation of workshops nationally and abroad and deals with associative activities inside and outside Morocco. His first exhibition, Faith in Color, dates back to 1996 in Casablanca. The artist has just exhibited in Abu Dhabi and is invited to the 2008 Biennale in Sharja in the United Arab Emirates.
He lives and works in Marrakech.

At Boustane, calligraphy is primarily a matter of passion and patience. Its edges, its jambs and its falls express an aesthetic of the form.
Essentially gestural, his writing sometimes targets a determined geometrical representation if it is not that of abstract objects in a very soberly colored space.

Thus calligraphy and positioning, letters are symbols of creation; The world is taken from the nothingness of the "page" by means of a formulated alphabet. Whether on leather or paper, with the exception of chromatic effects, the sentences form a firmly held body, the links of which represent the actions and ideas that generally refer to sounds.

The pale yellow and the brown color serve as the backdrop for sumac lettering whose consistency and impact vary according to the nature of the tracings.
Boustane nevertheless remains faithful to a very rudimentary coloring, physically close to the color on cloth, and whose use is normally in the tradition.

The letter carries with Boustane an ethic, a sense of the sacred. Thus, the artist avoids the demonstrative colors of artistic painting and reduces his palette to a mystique of pigmentation that he judges in harmony with his drawing of calligrapher.

"The sign is the product of the interaction of all civilizations ... this is the history of all the calligraphies ... Hence the song and the dance of my motifs: letters known but assembled in images, in words without Signified or signifying ... a rhythm that opens the field of an infinity and represents for me a cosmic love for everything. "

Main exhibitions

2010. Gallery Agora. Marrakech
2010. Individual exhibition at the International Biennial
2010. The calligraphy of Sharjah The wine of exile, creative conceptual work
2010. Prize of the International Festival of Arabic Calligraphy of Algiers
2009. Dijon, France
2008. 5 + 5. Abu Dhabi, E.A.U
2007. ARTour 2007. Essaouira
2007. Exhibition of Essaouira. Sophia Antipolis, France
2007. Aulnay sous Bois . la France
2006. Dance of letters. Dar Bellarj Foundation. Marrakech
2004 . 1st National Art Exhibition Casablanca
2004 . Lerch, Switzerland
From letter to gesture. Museum of Selves, Obidos -
Alfandega da fairy. Lisbon
1st National Art Exhibition of Casablanca
2003. Bologna, Italy - Chevalier, Luxembourg
2002. Art Gallery Marrakech
2001. Solidarity Show Sahel Africa France
2001. Armor, France
1998. Traditions reinvented. Gallery Al Manar. Casablanca
1997 . Free of letters. Pragma. Casablanca

Died in 2024 .