Farah Atassi: Metamorphosis — Farah Atassi

Almine Rech New York is pleased to present ’Metamorphosis,’ Farah Atassi’s fifth solo exhibition with the gallery, on view from June 26 to July 31, 2026.

"My soul is wrought to sing of forms transformed to bodies new and strange!" The invocation from Ovid’s Metamorphoses is an apt preface for Farah Atassi’s new body of work. Across these eight paintings, transformed forms abound, deconstructed through a liberation of mind and brushstroke.

In Nocturne , a curious form, both vegetal and human, stands in an indeterminate space, part interior, part Baconesque cage. We sense that a change is under way, as her constructed surroundings yield to more uncanny elements. Clouds drift through the scene with utter disregard for the walls and the window frame. It is day outside, yet a full moon hangs in the corner. This was the first painting the artist completed in the series, and as it opened up a new world for her, so it does for the viewer.

A narrative begins to emerge: each work represents a dream, distinct, spontaneous visions tied delicately together through shared preoccupations and formal choices. Clouds act as guides, leading the eye from one canvas to the next. In the verdant still life The Pears and the Clouds , they take a rest, improbably set on tables like any other sundry item. Atassi is interested in the ambiguous materiality of clouds and their fluctuating nature, as well as compositional hierarchies. Long relegated to the background of paintings, she recast clouds as central characters. 
— Louisa Mahoney, Researcher

About the artist

Farah Atassi is a French painter whose work explores the intimate relationships between the figure and its surrounding space. In her paintings, the figures are never reduced to mere representations: they inhabit environments that extend their interiority. Motifs, forms, and compositions all contribute to a shared pictorial language, in which space acts as the mirror of an interior world.

Her practice unfolds in a constant spirit of experimentation. Shaped by a plural identity—born to Syrian parents and raised in Belgium—Farah Atassi has developed a body of work infused with multiple cultural and emotional layers. At once figurative and conceptual, her oeuvre stands out for its rejection of narrative in favor of a meditation on the very means of painting. It is marked by a fertile tension between embodiment and movement, where gesture and material heighten the sensory experience.

Throughout her career, Atassi has exhibited in prestigious solo and group exhibitions, receiving international recognition. Notable shows include ‘Genius Loci’ at the Museo Picasso Málaga, Spain (2025), ‘Farah Atassi’ at the Musée national Picasso-Paris, France (2022), and the duo exhibition ‘La société des spectacles’ at the Fondation Pernod Ricard, Paris, France (2024). Her work has been shown in other major institutions such as the Consortium Museum, Dijon, France and the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, France.

Atassi has been the subject of four monographs and her work is represented in major public and private collections worldwide, including the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; the Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon, France; the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France; the Deji Art Museum, Nanjing, China; the Davis Museum, Wellesley, MA, US; and the Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles, CA, US.