For its first participation in SWAB, the gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition by the Franco-Syrian artist Raphaël-Bachir Osman, bringing together a selection of recent works, some of which are previously unseen. This new body of work revolves around the theme of indulgence, a recurring motif in the artist’s practice, which he approaches as a sensory, cultural, and deeply painterly register.

In Raphaël-Bachir Osman’s work, indulgence goes beyond a simple evocation of pleasure or childhood; it becomes a true field of formal and chromatic experimentation. Food, sugary or milky textures, and familiar, popular forms serve as pretexts for painting—for manipulating material and exploring the expressive potential of color. While the subject matter is often recognizable and immediately accessible, it quickly opens onto a freer, almost instinctive mode of painting, where gesture and sensation take precedence.
The paintings, with their evocative titles—“Choco Barquette,” “Mille-feuille,” “Chocotablette,” “Du lait pour la douceur”—unfold an imaginary that is both intimate and collective, oscillating between domestic references, popular culture, and sensory memory. Through these works, the artist plays with the codes of representation: forms fragment, overlap, or dissolve, while the pictorial material—at times thick, at times fluid—asserts its presence.

This selection highlights the diversity of his pictorial language, its treatments, and its rhythms. What runs through the entire body of work is, above all, a fervent desire to paint, visible in the energy of the gesture, the density of the surfaces, and the freedom with which the artist engages his subjects.
Underlying the work, indulgence also emerges as a metaphor for perception and for the act of painting itself—an insatiable appetite for image, material, and color. It establishes a direct, almost physical relationship to painting, inviting the viewer into an experience that is both visual and sensory, where pleasure intertwines with a deeper reflection on the images that surround us and the emotions they evoke.