Raphaël-Bachir Osman

Raphaël-Bachir Osman (born 1992) graduated from the Haute École des Arts du Rhin (HEAR Mulhouse) and also studied in 2016 at the Kunsthochschule Weissensee in Berlin.

From 2017 to 2020, he was co-director of Erratum Galerie, an artist-run space located in Berlin, Kreuzberg. He has taken part in numerous group exhibitions in Berlin and, in 2019, his work was shown at Kunst Raum Riehen (Basel), at the Biennale Jeune Création Mulhouse 019, and for the Prix de Novembre in Vitry. In 2020, he was nominated for the Révélations Emerige Prize and received a research and creation grant from the Création en Cours program of the Ateliers Médicis.

Raphaël-Bachir Osman develops a multifaceted practice ranging from painting to installation. Working alone or collaboratively, he joyfully questions every stage in the life of artworks and the compelling notion of originality—from creation to installation and exhibition.

Attentive to the formal, symbolic, kitsch, or outdated oddities of everyday life, he extracts, projects, and reinvests sensual and surprising motifs into the reflective spaces of the white cube or onto canvas. By blending registers and tones, materials and effects, he skillfully plays with a singular humor that borders on the absurd, bad taste, or perhaps the keys to a mystical symbolism whose codes remain to be deciphered.

As Camille Bardin (October 2021) writes, painting for him is a matter of pleasure and camaraderie. He first painted sausages in all kinds of situations—his first “models.” Then came ducks, pretzels, dishcloths. These objects become folkloric characters, much like the lemon or asparagus were for Manet.

His studio becomes a playground where anecdotes multiply. Everyday objects—such as a table tennis racket, once a simple palette—are elevated to the status of support, becoming contemporary tondi. He gathers fragments of the world: a snack from an aperitif, a detail from a Flemish painting, memories of Sunday afternoons. There is no hierarchy of subjects—what matters is his bold desire for painting.

One motif persists: the sky. For Osman, limits and frames dissolve. The recurring blue becomes a leitmotif—from the skies he saw in Berlin’s museums to the iconic wallpaper of Toy Story, even the Windows 98 desktop background. What is usually a background becomes the subject itself: a window onto the world, as painting is for him an escape, a field of possibilities, an infinite playground.

Camille Bardin — October 2021

Selected Exhibitions