On aurait pu se rencontrer
October 16 – November 21, 2026
Bremond Capela presents On aurait pu se rencontrer, Elias Loudiyi’s first solo exhibition at the gallery, dedicated to memory and to what can emerge from loss. Drawing from family albums and photographs taken in France and Morocco, he paints imagined encounters between familiar faces and strangers, giving a new presence to what has disappeared. Empty spaces left in the paintings keep the narrative open, so memory remains a starting point rather than a fixed story.
Installation view
À propos de l’exposition
Bremond Capela presents On aurait pu se rencontrer1, an exhibition by Elias Loudiyi dedicated to memory and to what can emerge from loss. The artist approaches mourning in its broadest sense: the disappearance of a loved one, absence, forgetting, or separation. How can we give a new presence to what disappears? Painting extends a connection and makes encounters possible across time, eras, and places.
His paintings draw from family albums, photographs taken in France and Morocco, and personal photographs. Some faces are familiar to him, while others belong to strangers photographed in places he has never visited. Through repeated encounters with these images, a sense of intimacy develops with what was once unfamiliar. He may feel close to a face without having shared its history. The exhibition’s title finds another resonance here: that of an encounter with people whose stories and images he possesses, but whom he has never met.
A photograph may remain in an album for a long time before becoming a painting. Elias Loudiyi looks at it, returns to it, until a detail or a composition catches his attention. What moves him in the image then guides the work, without determining its outcome.
He isolates a gesture, changes a framing, or brings together photographs from different periods. An old image may thus join a more recent scene within the same composition. Painting gives rise to a situation that has never existed; it transforms what has been passed down to him and gives it a continuation. Drawing on his personal history, Elias Loudiyi opens up a space in which anyone can find something of themselves.
The empty spaces left within his paintings contribute to this openness. They allow viewers the freedom to project their own memories onto them, without the image imposing a fully defined narrative. With On aurait pu se rencontrer, Elias Loudiyi pursues his desire to paint in order not to forget. Memory forms a starting point, but it evolves throughout the creative process and through the gazes brought to bear upon it. In the artist’s own words, it is about “giving things a new future.”
Born in 2001 in Paris, Elias Loudiyi graduated from the Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2026. He received the agnès b. Prize in 2024. On aurait pu se rencontrer is his first solo exhibition at Galerie Bremond Capela.
1 Title borrowed from François Cheng’s book On aurait pu se rencontrer, published by Albin Michel, Paris, 2026.
Détails de l’exposition
- Dates
- October 16 – November 21, 2026
- Lieu
-
Bremond Capela
13 rue Béranger, 75003 Paris - Artiste
- Elias Loudiyi
- Photographie
- Nicolas Brasseur