Ghassan Zard’s solo exhibition ALTARS, curated by Marc Mouarkech, unfolds at Villa Audi in Beirut until 11 October 2025. Through sculpture and painting, Zard explores how memory, trauma, and survival can be held within form. In Zard’s body of work the altar is no longer a sacred site of worship but a fragile architecture of survival. Each of the three altars on view suggests a different orientation: vertical ascent, liminal passage, and horizontal fire. On this occasion, Selections spoke with artist Ghassan Zard (G.H) and curator Marc Mouarkech (M.M) about the exhibition’s themes, its dialogue with Villa Audi, and the place of art in times of fracture.
Ghassan, your works in ALTARS oscillate between sculpture and painting, matter and image. How do you see these mediums complementing – or challenging – each other in your practice?
G.Z: For me, painting and sculpture are two different ways of expressing myself, of breathing. Sculpture is about matter, weight, and resistance. It carries the marks of the hand, the body, the struggle with bronze or wood, but also the voice of the material itself, which I try to listen to rather than control. In sculpture, there are many participants in the creative production. In painting, I am alone. It opens into my personal inner thoughts and dreams. When I stand alone in front of my canvas, I discover my idea with my own gestures. I also discover the capacities and limits of my own body in relation to it. At the end, I don’t see them as separate. I work on both in parallel. One practice nourishes the other and challenges it. For me, they complement each other, making my practice whole.
The exhibition unfolds through three distinct “altars” – vertical, liminal, and horizontal. What is the significance of altars in reflecting different ways of engaging with trauma, memory, and transformation?
G.Z: When I say altar, I don’t mean something religious or untouchable. For me, an altar is simply a place where we put things that matter, where memory and emotion gather, where people assemble their wishes and sacrifice. In the show, I imagined three kinds. The vertical altar rises; it’s about resilience and standing tall. The liminal altar is that in-between space, where change starts to happen. The horizontal altar lies on the ground, carrying weight, grief, and rest. Together, they reflect different ways we live with pain and how, sometimes, we manage to turn it into something else. The whole exhibition is a quest for silence and an invitation to contemplate.
You describe your work as “a mystical search that leads into silence,” yet also one shaped by crises and violence. How do you navigate between these opposing forces when creating, and what role does art play in holding them together?
G.Z: I don’t consider silence as the absence of violence. It is what remains after the noise, after the storm. We live in a country where violence is constant, not always through war, but through the weight of crisis, loss, and instability. My work does not deny this. It absorbs it. But art also allows me to move beyond despair. It is a form of prayer without religion, a way of holding contradictions together. In that space, silence and violence can coexist, and maybe offer something that feels closer to the truth.
Marc, in conceiving ALTARS, how did you approach the dialogue between Ghassan Zard’s works and the charged architectural setting of Villa Audi?
M.M: Villa Audi is not a blank white cube. It has its own history, its own presence, and I wanted that to be part of the show. The stained-glass skylight, the stone walls, the mosaics, they don’t sit quietly in the background; they interact with the works. My aim was to let Ghassan’s pieces resonate with the building, to create a dialogue that both honours and unsettles the space. In that way, Villa Audi itself becomes part of the story, a place where memory and matter, past and present, meet.
The exhibition unfolds through three distinct “altars.” What guided the curatorial decision to structure the show around these ontological forms, and how do they shape the visitor’s journey?
M.M: Ghassan already speaks about the altars as gestures, but what mattered to me in the curatorial process was how they shape the act of witnessing. Each altar is not just a work to look at, but a structure that orients the body in space. They ask: where do we stand, what do we face, how do we resist forgetting? Rather than guiding visitors through a linear exhibition, I wanted to create a field of positions: moments of standing, crossing, resting, where people can confront the works and, at the same time, confront themselves. In that sense, the altars are less about devotion and more about a practice of presence, of projection, of holding memory in the here and now.
Location: Villa Audi, Beirut, Lebanon.
Date: 22 September until 11 October 2025.
About Ghassan Zard
Born in 1954, Ghassan Zard trained as a dentist before turning to art, transforming the tools of his profession into instruments of expression. His first exhibitions in Lebanon during the 1980s preceded his move to Paris, where studies at the Ateliers de Paris and a parallel career in antique dealing deepened his engagement with history and material memory. Influenced by Japanese literature, Zard’s practice spans painting, sculpture, and poetry, exploring the tension between restraint and rupture. Since 2012, his partnership with Galerie Tanit has anchored his international presence, presenting work that navigates memory, trauma, and the fragile act of endurance.