Following the major retrospective dedicated to Michael Biberstein at Culturgest Lisbon in 2018, the gallery Jeanne Bucher Jaeger is pleased to present SEEING, a new exhibition of the artist’s paintings and works on paper. Born in 1948 in Solothurn, Allemannic Switzerland, the Swiss-American artist had chosen Portugal as his adopted country where he lived for forty years and where he died in 2013. 

This exhibition gives a deeper insight into the various stages of Michael Biberstein’s artistic life from the deconstrution in his paintings in the 70s, when the very structure of his art was perceived as a system of signs, to his long and meticulous pictorial research starting at the end of the 80s: installations composed of bamboo in which spaces and cracks of thin layers of canvas alternate, installations exploring the polarized relationship between floor and wall or the outline of a shape, or again the Prospect/Refuge series from the 1980s, or that of the predella (in a reference to Medieval painting), monochromes reinforcing contemplative landscapes. He then studied the very medium of painting, oil and acrylic, the declension of possible syntaxes until he achieved painting as a spatial and temporal experience based on a physiological, emotional and intellectual response that colour, shape and medium trigger in the observer. Biberstein labelled his paintings, which are admiring reminiscences of Vernet, Friedrich, Turner, Monet, Cézanne and Rothko, but also secret imprints of eastern landscapes, as “seeing machines.” 

Courtesy of Gallery Jeanne Bucher Jaeger.

Mohammed Kazem: Infinite Angles features new works on paper, paintings and readymade, which continue Kazem’s exploration of materiality and the visualization of light and sound. The artworks on view are imprints and records of both material and immaterial things in the world, they reveal an invisible light and inaudible sound that exists in a continuous sequence with no beginning or end. Kazem photographs light to capture its manifestations across building constructions. He also hears the sound of light as he scratches it onto the surface of paper.

Courtesy of Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde

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Feature caption: Mohammed Kazem, Windows, 2019–20. Gouache, watercolour and graphite on paper, 30 x 30 cm. Part of a set of 14 works.

We are delighted to announce the first solo exhibition by Gideon Rubin in Italy.

Rubin creates paintings where the figures are rendered without their facial features. Thus the gaze of the viewer is not captured by physiognomy, but by the atmosphere unleashed by the entire images; the subjects are characterized by their positions and attitudes, by the way they move in space and dress.

Evanescent and melancholic, Rubin’s works speak of a past or a recollection that has surfaced in memory. The paint is dense and seductive, with fluid strokes that describe intimate atmospheres and complicity between the subjects portrayed. With their forcefully evocative character, these figures trigger direct empathy in the viewer.

The subjects are depicted during everyday activities; the artist draws us into moments of elusive intimacy. A couple walking with arms around each other, a young woman undressing, flowers gradually wilting become part of a temporal dimension of slowness and calm. Landscapes are barely indicated settings, colors that stand out, revealing parts of untouched canvas.

The delicate colors used by Rubin – sandy tones, grayish blues, milky whites – combined with the multiple brushstrokes on the canvas suggest the desire to bring something almost forgotten back to life and give it permanence. The viewer can complete the missing details using his own memories.

The sources for Rubin’s works are mostly found images, old photographs that belong to a personal but anonymous past, or recent images from magazine belonging to contemporary culture. The artist collects them, creating an archive of images for his paintings, a sort of act of re-appropriation of personal memories and stories. The subjects, though differing in nature, are stylistically comparable, equalized with one another. Past and present, conscious and unconscious, personal and universal are equivalent in the eyes of the artist. Rubin’s works thus narrate fragments of a wider, complex history of multiple implications, whose many sources, artistic citations and mass media culture, are reworked in a very personal pictorial language.

The erasure of facial features in Rubin’s works takes on an unintentional resonance in the present pandemic: the surgical masks we are all wearing now remove our main identifying characteristics, making us become abstract and enigmatic, but at the same time real and vital, like the subjects he depicts.

Courtesy of Monica de Cardenas.

Throughout history, humans adopted myths as a tool to understand the world around them.

From prehistoric cave drawings and Ancient Greece to contemporary art, artists have embraced mythology within their practice to tell stories and more recently to reinvent history.

During a time of social distancing, rise of biopolitics and the breakdown of daily routines HOFA Gallery presents Myth-Making exhibition, to explore a concept which is an integral part of the artistic aesthetic language.

Through examining these works through the lens of Myth-Making, the exhibition aims to achieve two interrelated goals: to analyse individual artists and the multifaceted artistic practices, as well as to explore the historical and cultural relevance of myth-making.

While we continue to occupy the digital world more so than ever before, Myth-Making welcomes the viewer into the 3D virtual viewing room, encouraging a shared experience of celebration of artistic practice and reinvention of tradition.

Courtesy of HOFA Gallery

 

Ivan Gallery is delighted to invite you to visit the exhibition “It was always in plain sight”, Silvia Amancei & Bogdan Armanu (SABA)’s first solo show at Ivan Gallery.

“It was always in plain sight” is a new site-specific project which unfolds in the gallery’s space in the shape of a cinematic plot narrated through a multimedia installation of objects, paintings, drawings and collages, multi-layered frames instead of literally moving-images. The storyline features two characters acted by the artists themselves as an upper-middle-class couple stumbling upon a victim-less presumed murder scene on an eventful night: “The two discover a stain of blood on their living room floor. A murder? Maybe, but there’s no body, there’s no criminal. Surely, it’s just a confusion.“ (SABA) The signs of anonymous violence and aggression invade their domestic environment and while trying to ignore, cover up or clean them, the two end up being devoured as well by the nameless, invisible affliction.

Employing the aesthetic tools of thriller and horror cinema, the artists aim at deconstructing the ideological mechanisms of Hollywood and the social blindness of neoliberalism, uncovering a deeper discussion on the contemporary configuration of life and its many “invisible” or rather ignored systemic threats. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic just adds up a coincidental layer of meaning on top of a previously conceived project dealing with the weak spots of today’s capitalist societies, art’s powerlessness and the artist’s uncertain condition.

Courtesy of Ivan Gallery.

Galerie Janine Rubeiz invites you to discover Selim Mawad’s work in his first solo exhibition.

Half-man, half-bull, Mawad’s Minotaur is implicated in the social dynamic which leads to universal revolt, as a representation of the collective self. Mawad’s art is a symptom of his activism, a mere manifestation of his unwavering bid for the universal values he has upheld for over two decades.

His Bull rises in Africa and resigns in Beirut. The exhibition treads the metamorphosis of the bull, and in effect becomes a eulogy for many failed revolutions, yet a celebration of the process and the will to revolt. As Lebanon’s revolution comes to its demise, the bull recedes, the human surfaces, slaughtering the calf as a revolution must slaughter the very social norms it is seated in – a crime seen in the bird’s eye view! And the antelope emerges.

Whilst the Thawr –الثور is sacred for some, and Revolt – Intifada is revolution for many, the Thawrat – الثورة is the primordial self of one and of all.

Courtesy of Galerie Janine Rubeiz.

Mashrabia Gallery is thrilled to announce their first show of the Summer: Ibrahim El Haddad’s solo exhibition “Serendipity”! Because of the current circumstances, this exhibition is held exclusively ONLINE on ARTSY.

In continuation with his last solo exhibition “Simple Things” held at Mashrabia Gallery of Contemporary Art, Cairo based artist Ibrahim El Haddad returns with a new body of work deeper and more powerful than ever, yet imbued with a strong sense of calm and vulnerability. His figures, which evoke ancient Egyptian physical features, are represented in all their simplicity, stripped of all artifice or pretentiousness, leaving only what is essential, their noble presence and the fragility of their being. They are alive, breathing, almost frozen in time and space, thus radiating a strong sense of familiarity which encourages the viewers to further reflect on and deepen their sense of Humanity. The figures are no longer associated to their lands, cultures or traditions, but become universal beings, revealing themselves to themselves, emitting a deep emotional and human charge. The many natural elements in El Haddad’s paintings such as birds, fish and vines are not simply decorative elements, but hold a specific purpose: reinforcing the moment of communion with oneself, but also symbolises a new found connection with one’s surroundings, especially with Nature, exploited and abused for so long by mankind. Life challenges and everyday hassles pause as we form a deeper connection with the earth, and only in these conditions the essence of a person emerges. By travelling through Ibrahim El Haddad’s exhibition, the viewer undertakes a journey of introspection and self-exploration, giving him the courage to look towards the distant horizon in all tranquillity, serenity and without being afraid of what is yet to come, in all serendipity.

Courtesy of Mashrabia Gallery

Featuring sculptors, Mahmoud Mokhtar, Adam Henein and Armen Agop, Meem Gallery’s Summer exhibition looks at the last century of Egyptian sculpture, through three outstanding works.

Sculpture has always featured prominently in the rich history of Egyptian material culture. Stylised human, animal and hybrid forms decorated the tombs of the Pharaonic elite, and monumental structures paid homage to their many gods and kings. Considering this remarkable heritage, much of it still extant, it is little wonder that a stylistic continuum exists in modern and contemporary Egyptian sculpture.

Through these three works by sculptors spanning three generations, this exhibition focuses on the artistic legacy, continuum and development of Egyptian sculpture.

This exhibition is dedicated to the memory of Adam Henein who sadly passed away on the 22nd of May 2020.

Courtesy of Meem Gallery

Here it is a question of lines, whether vertical or horizontal, straight or twisted, with warm or cold colours:
the exhibited paintings are made of these diff erent vocabularies, which come together and oppose each
other in this series.

A dialogue develops, in which tensions may arise and mistakes can be made.
It becomes clear that a confrontation is taking place, that between man and machine. The works are
constructed in a mechanical fashion, the paintings created by the errors produced by cutting and wedging.
The toner ink is then manually applied in layers. It separates the diff erent parts of the works, aiming to
increase the variations and diff erences, enriching the contrasts and adding complexity.

It is at this stage that a link is formed between man and printer.
The artist has thus substituted himself for the machine, using error as the fundamental tool for his production.

Courtesy of galerie frank elbaz