Ayyam Gallery Beirut is pleased to announce Opacity and Transparency, a solo exhibition of New York- based artist Samia Halaby presenting her latest works.

Following a 2017 solo-exhibition at Ayyam Gallery Dubai, Halaby has since than added additional works to her series Illuminated Space, highlighting the artist’s latest experiments in the interplay of opacity and transparency within Illuminated Space.

The initial works of the series focus on luminosity accomplished through the relationship of colors. The suggestion of radiating light within her worksdeveloped into an exploration of what she describes as ‘the space of light.’ For Halaby, luminosity in her paintings is learnt from seeing ambiances such as the darkness of night, or evening light in a city, and contract of interior and exterior light.

The series build upon past experiences of seeing the world. New York City and the daily activity of her neighbourhood are where the artist encounters human organization and interprets it using geometric forms. Nature’s complex forms, their surprising combinations also impact her canvas. Motion is a coherent part of her interpretations as she walks down the streets noting the expansion of things as she approaches them and their contraction as she walks away.

Halaby’s latest additions to the series depict a denser, more layered organization. Here she explores how transparency affects the hard edges of shape and how layers can be used to illustrate degrees of density and softness. For this, Halaby adopted a method new to her practice called ‘dry brush’. With works such as Interpenetrating Transparencies,Halaby renders her square and triangular brush marks as a series of overlapping transparent layers to allow the canvases to become more textured and softer.

Mark Hachem Gallery is delighted to present an exhibition of relief and sculpture by artist Alfred Basbous (1924 – 2006). A major pioneer of Modernist sculpture in the Middle East, Basbous drew on the influence of Jean Arp, Constantin Brâncuși and Henry Moore to create stone and bronze sculptures of often monumental proportions. The exhibition brings together a series of sculptures from the 1960’s to the 2000’s, which demonstrate Basbous’ exploration of the relationship between form and material. A selection of Basbous’ preparatory drawings which reveal his approach to relief and sculpture are also exhibited.

Courtesy of Mark Hachem Gallery.

Driven by the desire for adventure and discovery, Cobi Moules embraces the beauty of nature all the while shifting its weight through the exaltation of his own existence within, and as part, of it. This is best exemplified by the way he incorporates multiple self-portraits throughout his compositions. The multiplicity of self takes both precedence over, as well as integration into, the landscape creating a world with a sense of excitement, self-worth and play.

The locations of Moules’ compositions are equally important. All of the locations were previously depicted in paintings by the Hudson River School. Through the exploration of the grand American landscape and the reflection on mid-19th century American landscape painting, Moules navigates the parallels between the Hudson River School and the religious ideology that was an integral part of his formative years. Shared throughout both is the elevation of purity, virginity and the honor of sacrificing one’s selfhood for the glory of God. As the Hudson River School artists’ work embodies the overpowering force of God made manifest through nature, so do the religious voices of Moules’ past against the validation of his existence.

Moules states, “As a queer and trans person, I seek to renegotiate my relationship with this upbringing and the act of being told I am ‘unnatural’ through such a Christian lens. I utilize traditional representation as a way of seeking inclusion while disrupting the original narrative. Creating a space for personal significance and a queer and trans presence, the importance becomes the experience of my multiple and overall presence. It is a community of me playing, exploring my selves, exploring nature and being part of it.”

Revisiting Hesitation places the viewer in a trap where a decision is being made and unmade in the consciousness and subconsciousness of a man being prepared for battle. The spectator is locked in a loop, floating over a city whose people cannot bury their beloved. Instead, they rehearse their funerals the night before their departure to battle.

Roy Dib, born in 1983, works and lives in Beirut. On both formal and conceptual levels, artist and filmmaker Roy Dib challenges common notions of space and boundary, weaving together archival material, scripted text and hypothetical circumstances to chronicle the political narratives of our day.

The Lighthouse

Dome of the human relationship with heaven, the disk or the half disk reflecting the light of civilization.

A geometric equation to a doctrine, to a beginning, to a universal question… to  universal beauty, to lines: straight, bent or intersecting… crossing over Earth, disturbing trees and their fruits… the soil and the seasons of nature which merge with the fabric of the human imagination that swings and soars with joy, reverence and aspiration.

You are the epitome of those who seek meaning behind words and speech.

You are the color that cannot be abolished, the sound that never interrupts whispering melodies in the bows of the arches of your minarets and churches, in the links of your keystones to history… in the struggle, in the wars of survival, in the search for truth and freedom.

You are Jerusalem, the embodiment of beauty, the divine city of salvation, the immortal righteous torch.

You are the uncompromising land, the rock that can’t be abolished no matter how long wars are waged.

You are Jerusalem, the city of cultures the torch and the lighthouse of freedom.

You are the manifestation of our traditions, the inspiration to our art and poetry. You are the bearer of our conscience and speech. You are our ultimate prayer.

You are the holiest of the holy, the cross of sacrifice, the church of resurrection ever standing, the way of the cross. You are the persistent and continual sparkle of humanity looking for peace on the altar of forgotten justice.

You are our Jerusalem. To you our humble prayers go every day.

Jamil Molaeb
2018

Courtesy of Galerie Janine Rubeiz

Letitia Gallery is pleased to announce Eyes Recently Seen, a solo exhibition by Basir Mahmood. Curated by Lauren Wetmore, the show presents new and existing photographic and video works which reveal the distinctive processes by which the artist recreates his own visual experiences. Fascinated by the structures of daily life – labour, hierarchy, distribution and identity – Mahmood’s photographs and videos occupy a space between staged scenes and spontaneous documentation.

In Eyes Recently Seen, works from the past five years of Mahmood’s practice – including meditations on fishermen (Message to the Sea, 2012) and blessed water (Holy water from Mecca, 2015) – are shown together with new pieces that investigate communal human consumption. Taken together, the works demonstrate the artist’s position in relation to the various social structures which they reflect.

For the new works in the exhibition, including Milk (2018) and All Good Things (2018), Mahmood composed the activity of individuals from various occupations, including day-laborers and milk sellers, in a Lahore film studio. The participants were invited to enact their vocations, to explore the nuances of human interaction.

The new diptych, All Divided Equally (2018), continues Mahmood’s fascination with the societal division of resources by depicting an abundance of food, each item cut exactly in half to create a multitude of diptychs. The resulting tableaux considers the outcome of equality in distribution.

NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery presents Ways of Seeing, curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, founders of the multi-disciplinary curatorial platform Art Reoriented, Chairmen of the Montblanc Cultural Foundation, and Affiliate Curators at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin. The exhibition brings together 26 artists through 41 works spanning a variety of media from painting, sculpture and photography to sound, film and installation. It first opened at ARTER – Space for Art in Istanbul and was later adapted for the Boghossian Foundation – Villa Empain in Brussels.

The exhibition includes a number of seminal works that relate, in various ways, to Berger’s multilayered argument. By inviting the viewer to take a second look, upon which the contours of a new reality begin to emerge, they reflect Berger’s call for the viewer to be actively engaged in the act of seeing. A 1968 projection piece by James Turrell, a 1992 vertical construction installation by Fred Sandback, along with a 1966 mirror installation by Michelangelo Pistoletto all blur the boundaries between the artwork and the space in which it is displayed. Video pioneers Paul and Marlene Kos’s 1976 Lightning video, two of Gustav Metzger’s 1996 “Historic Photographs,” and two photographic prints by Lateefa bint Maktoum from 2011 and 2014 respectively, play on the tension between presence and absence, providing the viewer with new ways of accessing the artwork and its corresponding subject matter. Works by Salvador Dali, Alicja Kwade, or Hassan Sharif and Andreas Gursky change our perception of familiar objects by altering their function, display context or physical appearance, making us ponder the way in which narratives are constructed through what we see.

Ways of Seeing will be accompanied by a full program of public events, including talks, workshops, and family-friendly activities.