“I am not interested in the finished image. I am interested in the residue of time on a surface — what paint looks like when it has been reconsidered eleven times.”
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Habib Alrai
Selected works
Exhibitions
Upcoming
Bone & Cinder
Galerie Sainte-Catherine · Montreal · Canada · Solo
Nov 2026 — Jan 2027
Recent
Quiet Horizons
Fondation Al Manar · Dubai · United Arab Emirates · Solo
Mar 2025 — Jun 2025
Biography
Habib Alrai builds surfaces the way a mason builds a wall: in slow, deliberate layers. Oil, bronze and paper are worked until the material remembers the gesture — ash settling, copper oxidising, a horizon refusing to stay still. Born in Casablanca and trained in Paris, he has kept a studio in Montreal since 2003, showing in solo and group presentations across Europe, North Africa and the Gulf.
The journey
From the medina workshops of Casablanca to the Beaux-Arts in Paris, then two decades of quiet studio work in Montreal. The practice moved from figurative drawing to the raw-material cycle Bone & Cinder, first shown in full this season.
Artistic vision
I am not interested in the finished image. I am interested in the residue of time on a surface — what paint looks like when it has been reconsidered eleven times.
School & language
Contemporary Abstraction · New Materialism
- Born
- Casablanca, 1974
- Education
- École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris
- Based in
- Montreal, Canada
Awards & recognition
- Grand Prize, Salon des Arts de Montréal, 2019
- Prix de la Fondation Al Manar, Dubai, 2021
- Artist residency, Cité internationale des arts, Paris, 2016
- Gold Medal, Casablanca Biennale, 2023