Letitia Gallery is pleased to announce a new solo exhibition by the British artist Nathaniel Rackowe, which takes the city of Beirut as a point of departure in order to investigate the ever-changing nature of cites, and their continual destruction and renewal.

The Shape of a City uses industrial materials such as corrugated roofing, galvanised steel and cement blocks, and combines them with artificial light; used to soften the hard edges of the mass produced materials, allowing Rackowe to explore the ways in which urban dwellers must continually adapt their behaviour in order to successfully negotiate the built landscape.

Kevork Mourad was born in Qamishli, a town in northeastern Syria. Of Armenian heritage, he received his Master of Fine Arts from the Yerevan Institute of Fine Arts in Armenia, and now lives and works in New York. With his technique of spontaneous painting, where he shares the stage with musicians—a collaboration in which art and music develop in counterpoint to each other—he has worked with many world-renowned musicians, including Kinan Azmeh, Brooklyn Rider, Ken Ueno, Liubo Borissov, and Issam Rafea.
Mourad is a member, as a visual artist, of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble. He has performed, among others, at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Bronx Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Harvard University, the Morgenland Festival, Le Festival du Monde Arabe in Montreal, the Nara Museum in Japan, Lincoln Center Atrium, the Art Institute of Chicago, the American Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Central Park’s Summerstage, the Agha Khan Museum in Toronto, and the ElbPhilharmonie in Hamburg.

Ayyam Gallery Beirut is pleased to invite you to the opening of Thresholds 3.0, the solo exhibition of painter Mouteea Murad, on Thursday, 7 June at 5.00 pm.

The third presentation of Mouteea Murad’s latest body of work, Thresholds 3.0, highlights a selection of paintings from the artist’s 2016 solo exhibition Thresholds presented at Ayyam Gallery Dubai. In this series Murad experiments with the use of mathematics in geometric abstraction, an approach to non-objective art that he developed over the course of a decade. Presenting a select number of large-scale paintings in a different setting allows the viewer to furtherexplore Murad’s emphasis on space and dimension, which he masters by both drawing on the formalism of Op art and using the Fibonacci number sequence as a starting point for his compositions. The artist’s use of the numerical sequence and mathematical functions results in an impression of motion and the illusion of expanding space within the works. His grid-like patterns partially conceal the interactions of the polygons and lines of the layer below them, creating an illusion of depth. As the distances between the grid lines change, the paintings appear to swell and contract in front of the viewer.

Murad continues to draw inspiration from Islamic art while employing forms and lines largely defined by algebraic functions, allowing for his work to see a unification of spirituality and formalism.

Lyons Wier Gallery is pleased to announce the exhibition, “Meditations” by Mark Zimmermann.

Mark Zimmermann’s work is based on the fusion of meditative fields, architectonic structures and an organic gestural line that is one-part intentional and one-part accidental. Zimmermann clearly demonstrates his deftness of hand through labored bands of color, building and editing one band upon other, until the editing process renders compositions that combine both hard-edge and action-painting abstraction.

His process begins by layering an initial ground laid down with palette knives and trowels. From there, the initial drawing gives shape to the composition to come. Over time, the elements are pushed back with repeated layers of a viscous wash and then brought back into play via sanding and then the process begins anew. By way of intent and incident the true pure nature of the work takes shape and the final composition presents itself.

Zimmermann states, “For the past three years, I have attempted to create metaphorical landscapes within my work, referencing the natural world, architecture and my interest in history, travel and literature. These all played a role to create a visceral form of painting that, through the use of color as a metaphor, becomes capable of capturing something meditative and timeless.”

Piercing the scared,

An interactive experience between a work of art and a spectator is a subjective one, that often resonates at the level of the unconscious. For this reason, to reflect on Zad Moultaka’s practice, and his ŠamaŠ project in particular, strictly though the medium of words is no simple task. What draws me to Moultaka’s work transcends the realm of his aesthetic methods: the artist embarks us on creative journey, shrouded in an ethereal aura.

If photography is “writing with light”,  one might interpret Moultaka’s fine art practice as “writing with musical notes.” To consider his artistic endeavors in music and painting as distinct from one another would be to overlook the fact that his paintings are often created in dialogue with the music he composes. By dissociating these practices from one another, we hear only one side of the conversation.

My fascination with Moultaka’s work began in 1998, when we first collaborated. His remarkable approach to the world captivates me: instead of seeking undeviating answers, Moultaka asks urgent questions, evoking in the spectator a peculiar, sensory experience whether through musical composition, painting, or most recently with ŠamaŠ at the 57th Venice Biennale. ŠamaŠ derives its inspiration from nature and exemplifies the artist’s preoccupation with the immaterial world. It seemed important to ensure that this experience reach a universal audience.

Presenting ŠamaŠ in such a reputable setting as the Venice Biennale was not a search for validation from Western audiences but rather an assertation of an authentic circulation of artistic production from Lebanon and the Middle East. ŠamaŠ puts forward a profound and unconventional narrative to address the state of our crumbling region. Often, an Arab artist’s obsession with history stems from a need for healing or remembrance. But this is not the case with Moultaka, and is what makes ŠamaŠ distinct. Rather than recreating narratives, Moultaka’s pensive approach calls for a global morality: what is sanctified at the heart of Man, and beyond the limitations of geography?

Now the Lebanese public has the chance to engage with this installation in person at the Sursock Museum, an institution whose commitment to inform and challenge its audience matches the intention of ŠamaŠ. Let this also be a reminder of what the Lebanese art community can accomplish when we dedicate our efforts towards preserving Lebanon’s cultural heritage in the face of all the political turmoil our country is experiencing.

The relationship between Lebanese political art, the Lebanese civil war and its exile repercussions has always been an ambivalent one. True, art needs peace and quiet for its development. And yet, time and time again, Hanibal Srouji has managed to prove the contrary by remaining a devoted mediator between reality and memory through atypical methods since his forced exile in 1976.

Today, forty-two years later, Srouji is beseeching us to redeem a fundamental right we as Lebanese have been deprived of: “The Right to Dream.”
Remarkably, tracing Hanibal’s artistic trajectory bears witness to his recurrent adherence to visiting loss and persistence of war memories without falling for the obsession to theorize or archive them. Instead, the artist embarks on a mission to revisit the trauma as a mean to heal and mend new possible ways to experience his ever changing reality. One can almost parallel the course of his work to the theory of Five Adaptive Stages of Grief in the field of psychology. From his exhibition “Particles” (1997) through “Healing Bands” (1999) reaching “Head in the Cloud (2013) and ultimately arriving to “Let us Dream” (2018), it is evident that Srouji is attempting to break the vicious cycle of constantly revisiting this agonizing period of Lebanon’s history and impetrating us to redirect our aspirations by simply dreaming.

Racha Itani

Combining large-scale clay reliefs & drawings Monika Grabuschnigg’s first solo exhibition, “What satisfaction could you possibly have”, explores the dislocated intimacies & disembodied desires of humans living in highly digitized societies.How we search for & connect with others, how we long for, flirt & fantasize together is changing dramatically. The apps & websites we turn to seem to offer direct portals to other lives – immediate & intimate interactions that can lead to in-the-flesh satisfactions. But there is no unmediated exchange: we are subject to, and encouraged to enact, self-censorship, self-exploitation. Our loves and loneliness mined for profit. Each of us put to work as blister-thumbed miner.

Both the reliefs & drawings in the show reference the ever-present screens through which this happens. We see fractured & repaired bodies morphing into one another; cropped & cracked identities exaggerated & engorged by algorithmic bias; character-limited emotions congealing into searching limbs, messy embraces, visceral gazes.Materially vulnerable, tonally fleshy, the inch-thick, flat-to-the-wall reliefs feel like substantial moments captured through a haze of distortion: the analog & digital worlds clashing head-on. The forms in the drawings are more of-this-worldly, but more deeply mired in dream-states. Created after (rather than as sketches for) the reliefs they feel like moments of surveillance: evidence gathered from tapping the data flows between the babbling ceramic.

Saleh Barakat Gallery presents a solo exhibition by Hiba Kalache, Lemonade Everything Was So Infinite, curated by Natasha Gasparian. Hiba Kalache presents works on paper, paintings, a connective body of sculptures, and an installation. She draws in her painting and she writes with her brush. Her gestures are vigorous yet intricate, scribbly à la Twombly. Her practice is one of écriture. To use Roland Barthes’ now-old French neologism, her painting is scriptible: its hermeneutic, symbolic, historic, and semic codes open up to an indeterminacy in the reading of both her work and its own textual references. Grand in scale, layered and ambiguous, it does not reaffirm what is mythologized. There is no singular unity in its composition, no universe that is total or whole. Kalache’s work demands a reception that is both distant and intimate, and in return, it promises jouissance akin, and yet antithetical to divine rapture.

vito acconci · richard artschwager · nairy baghramian · janette laverrière · marcel broodthaers · william s. burroughs · guy de cointet · robert wilhite · claude closky · baris dogrusöz · gheith al amine · jean-pascal flavien · david hammons · iman issa · nesrine khodr · ali meer · pallavi paul · ieva saudargaité · natascha sadr haghighian · nicholas bussmann · roy samaha

This exhibition introduces four influential figures of the 20th century, each of whom has initiated a very specific relationship between language and space, be it through transformation of poetry, performances, ready-mades, sculptures and installations, or politics of the body. marcel broodthaers, guy de cointet and richard artschwager are shown for the first time in lebanon and the region. together with vito acconci, their individual practices acknowledge the processes that have embedded language into visual art, through the materiality of printed text, verbal protocols and the way the tongue constantly migrates in and out the body. the old testament of david hammons, in which he impiously transforms marcel duchamp’s catalogue into everlasting data, echoes duchamp’s legacy as fundamental to the relationship between language and visual art.

space edits is curated by marie muracciole.

Sfeir-Semler Gallery is proud to bring to Beirut FRAGMENTS, a solo show by RAYYANE TABET. The exhibition opens on April 26th, 2018, 7 – 9 PM.

We will also be hosting on Saturday, April 28th from 11:00 AM a reading by the artist, a roundtable conversation with Kim Benzel & Clare Davies, curators at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and Bettina Steinbrügge, director of Kunstverein in Hamburg. Kaph books will be launching FRAGMENTS / BRUCHSTÜCKE published in collaboration with Kunstverein, Hamburg, and DAAD Artist-in-Berlin Program.

Rayyane Tabet exhibited with us for the first time in 2006 as part of the the group show Moving Homes. He had his first solo at the gallery in Beirut in 2013: The Shortest Distance Between Two Points, followed by Only Gods Never Die at the gallery in Hamburg in 2015.

FRAGMENTS explores an archeological dig led by Max von Oppenheim, a German diplomat and ancient historian, in Tell Halaf, Northeast Syria, at the turn of the 20th century. The project stemmed from a performance presented at the 2016 Marrakech Biennale, and evolved through a residency at the DAAD Artist-in-Berlin Program, and a show at Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam. The completed project was presented in Tabet’s first major institutional solo at the Kunstverein in Hamburg in November 2017.

Source: Sfeir-Semler Gallery

At once familiar and alien, landscapes are at the core of Aghbashian’s work. They seem to have been the theater of chaotic events left in a state of disturbing yet peaceful silence. An uncanny feeling is felt as one identifies with these anthropomorphic landscapes that speak of a fantasy place. In her paintings, flat parts of the landscapes or ‘cut-outs’ allude to kids’ pop-up books, reminiscent of Aghbashian’s childhood, and turn the two-dimensional surface into a skillfully layered one, populated by sculptural ruins. These images seem suspended in an in-between state, frozen after the occurrence of otherworldly phenomena, all the while propelling the viewer in a surrealist, sometimes futuristic dimension devoid of human life, as life itself has come to inhabit and animate the eerie landscapes. Time is not represented, it is perceived, as Aghbashian blurs all boundaries. She delves to understand the overlap and intersection of different narratives and explores the ambiguities of our times. As she builds up her paintings in layers and sands them back down, some remain transparent, others become dense, some blur, expand and shrink, get wiped, ever evolving and coexisting.

Gravity is what attracts Amal’s characters to their universe. Her silhouettes of women are bolder and larger than in her earlier paintings. Her strokes are soft in places and thick and defiant in others. Her colors are pale and serene with vibrant strong layers. Her characters are still women looking into the future, but now interacting with their environment. We see them as part of an interactive society, present and moving forward.

Amal Al Aathem speaks for women. Through the subtle messages in her paintings you can trace the development of women’s role and their place in a fast changing environment and a global universe.

The paintings in ‘Gravity’ are challenging, colorful and proud.

The exhibition will be on display until 30th June 2018.

Source: animagallery.com

Featured image: Amal Al Aathem, Universe 1, 2018, Mixed Media, 200 x 180 cm.

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, DUBAI – The Jean-Paul Najar Foundation (JPNF) is proud to
present Jene Highstein: Space and Place a solo exhibition showcasing the artist’s seminal sculptures as well as works on paper from the 1970s through the 1990s.

A key figure of sculptural abstraction, Highstein used bronze, concrete, steel and wood to create primal and organic forms. His quasi-manufactured sculptures create a dialogue between raw materials and biomorphism, stressing the importance of the object’s presence within a surrounding space and its impact on the viewer. The solidity of Highstein’s sculptures complement the delicacy of his works on paper. His drawings of intense bone black pigment and Chinese ink function as maquettes for the sculptural forms and clearly map the evolution of his sculptural abstraction.

Source: jpnajarfoundation.com

Featured image: Four Forged Steel, St Etienne 1978, Deutsch Foundation, Lausanne. Photo Magali Prod’Hom.