Dhewadi Hadjab’s solo presentation is now on view at The Armory Show in New York, at booth 106, through September 27, 2026.

For his first solo presentation in North America, Hadjab presents the third act of a body of work conceived as an ongoing theatrical performance or ballet.

The exhibition features a new series of oil paintings depicting an anonymous, androgynous non-professional dancer attempting to move freely through an improvised choreography. Working from sequences of photographs he carefully orchestrates, Hadjab selects the most enigmatic postures to translate into oil paint.

Having studied the chiaroscuro technique of the great masters, including Caravaggio, Jacques-Louis David and Eugène Delacroix, Hadjab also explores drapery, an element that dictates its own form and carries the unretrievable trace of its own memory.

*Act III, Extend* invites viewers to extend their bodies beyond the limits of the familiar while exploring variations of a single composition through a fragmented series, building suspense around the acts yet to come.

— Megan Macnaughton meganlmacnaughton