RIBAL MOLAEB | VIENNA • ZÜRICH • BEIRUT

An exhibition of paintings made between 2017 and 2020 in Austria, Switzerland and Lebanon.

“I grew up among colors and paintings; always fascinated by the idea of living with an artist, my father, Jamil Molaeb. Very often, I skipped school days to stay with him in his workshop.

At age six, I started studying classical music and trained as a violist.

At age seventeen, I moved to Salzburg, Austria to study at Mozarteum University, and then moved to Vienna to study at the University of Music and the Arts: Eight years of study before settling in Zürich, Switzerland.

I came back to painting like one goes back to their parents’ house in the village, as if to restore one’s roots.

Our ancestors did not feel rest until they dug their hands in the soil, planted the ground and enjoyed production. I find this rest when I fill my hands in oil paint and produce a painting.

I travelled the world with music: to China, America and Europe. But it was only through painting that I could travel back to my roots.

I learned how to paint while thinking as a musician. My paintings are based on harmony. Just like in music, each work has a harmonic, melodic and rhythmical structure. I think of the relation between colors like I think of intonation in music.

Mountains. Water. Space. A warm childlike world. Clear, luminous fields. Mysterious metaphysical poems. I leave it to the viewer to feel what my work resonates with.”

– Ribal Molaeb

Courtesy of Galerie Janine Rubeiz