In Entropy marks Ghazi Baker’s return with a solo exhibition shaped by over two years of intentional disorder. The exhibition opened on the 22nd of May at Mark Hachem Gallery in Beirut and will stay on view till the 10th of June 2025. Bringing together fractured typographies, dyslexic architectures, and mood swings in formal attire, the show operates as both satire and schema – a portrait of systems unravelling, of meaning lost mid-sentence. In the following conversation, Baker reflects on overthinking as method, absurdity as companion, and what it means to paint within a reality that refuses resolution.
This exhibition took two years to come to fruition. Could you share the journey behind the “overthinking, under-sleeping,” and your “long-term relationship with the absurd”? How did these elements shape the final body of work?
Ah yes, the two-year journey – equal parts painting, panicking, and politely arguing with myself and nothing. In Entropy wasn’t so much “created” as it was slowly exhumed from a collapsing internal archive of overthought ideas, sleepless tangents, and an increasingly committed relationship with absurdity.
The process was less linear and more like trying to build a gothic cathedral (the architect in me) out of mismatched Lego parts, while blindfolded, during a war . Every line you see is the result of a negotiation: between intention and distraction, between clarity and chaos.
Overthinking gave me the layers. Lack of sleep gave me the nerves. And absurdity? That gave me the freedom to stop pretending it all has to make sense, because what does in today’s world.
So yes, these paintings are technically “finished,” but like everything else in life right now, they’re mostly just holding themselves together with good lighting, hopefully pleasing colors, and a serious case of denial of everything going on around us. Just as a post scriptum, the “absurd” is, in my humble opinion, perfectly represented in “Entropy in Chief”. Not to state the obvious, but it’s obvious.
You mention “dyslexic architecture” in relation to some of your works. Could you elaborate on what you mean by this term, and how it relates to the broader themes of the exhibition?
Dyslexic architecture – my (not so much) affectionate term for when structure forgets its purpose and starts freelancing. This is the primary reason I started painting more than 30 years ago, as an outlet to my frustration with the limited creativity and the stringent rules of what you can do as an architect, throw in clients and their demands and you’re left with architecture in dyslexia . It’s what happens when the logic of form starts misreading itself, when order has a migraine, and when lines, grids, and geometry begin to behave like they’ve had too much coffee and not enough consensus.
In the context of In Entropy, it’s my way of dismantling the arrogance of “design” as something inherently rational. I trained in architecture, which means I learned how to make things stand. But this show? It’s more about watching them lean, crack, and occasionally flirt with collapse.
These compositions are built like cities designed by committee during a power outage (ie, Entropicity) – perspectives skew, axes wander, and symmetry gives up halfway through. That’s not a failure of control, it’s a reflection of reality. The world isn’t behaving architecturally anymore, so why should the work?
In short: dyslexic architecture is my blueprint for beautiful dysfunction. A love letter to structures trying their best in a system that’s already glitched, eroded and mostly dystopian.
You describe the paintings as “conversations lost halfway through.” How do you view the role of the unfinished or unresolved in your work, and how does this deliberate lack of closure contribute to the meaning of the pieces?
Yes, “conversations lost halfway through” because frankly, that’s how most real conversations go these days. Someone scrolls, someone zones out, someone mentions crypto or politics or breakfast, and suddenly we’re all emotionally buffering. That tension, that abrupt drift, is exactly what I lean into, what triggers me.
The unresolved in my work isn’t a flaw, in my opinion, it’s the thesis. I’m not here to offer narrative closure or tidy conclusions. That’s what bedtime stories are for. These pieces function more like open tabs in a crashed browser: thoughts overlapping, identities misfiring, ideas half-formed and already contradicting themselves.
Closure suggests that something has been understood, processed, concluded. But entropy doesn’t conclude, I don’t claim to either, it persists. It erodes. It reconfigures. So the “unfinished” in these works is a mirror held up to our very lived experience: one long, beautifully incoherent draft.
In that sense, the meaning isn’t in the resolution, it’s in the unravelling. Or, if you prefer: these are punchlines without jokes, and that’s the joke. I’ve been working within the premise of deconstruction for decades now, Entropy as a theory allows me to highlight the process at the expense of the results.
You speak of entropy not just as a concept, but as something embodied in the physicality of your studio floor. How does the environment in which you create influence the work itself, and what do you mean by the idea of entropy being physically present in your creative space?
Entropy as a lived experience, not just a theory politely discussed over wine and semiotics.
When I say entropy is embodied in my studio floor, I mean it quite literally. Step inside, at least whilst I was preparing for the show and you’ll find a topographical map of miscalculations, pigment rebellions, and dried layers of decisions I no longer emotionally support. The floor is a collaborator or rather an accomplice; silent, messy, and entirely unresolved. It bears witness to the chaos before the canvas ever gets touched.
The environment I work in isn’t curated, it’s complicit. Brushes stage walkouts. Tape disappears mid-process. Paintings lean against walls like disgruntled critics. And through it all, there’s a tangible, creeping disorder that seeps into the work, not as an aesthetic, but as a condition of existence.
So yes, entropy lives in the space. It’s underfoot, overhead, and occasionally in my coffee. It’s not just what I paint, it’s how I paint, where I paint, and the increasingly unhinged way I navigate a space that refuses to stay still. The work, like the room, is in a constant state of becoming. Or undoing. Same thing.
At the end of the day – or the unravelling of it – In Entropy isn’t about answers. It’s about tension, malfunction, and the beauty of not tidying up. If the show feels unresolved, glitchy, or emotionally sideways, then it’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to.
I’m not here to decode the chaos, I’m here to dialogue with it, argue with it, sometimes just let it win. These works aren’t exclusively about mastery. They’re about surrendering control with as much precision (hence Life in Entropy) as possible. Because in a world constantly demanding clarity, coherence, and clean lines, I’d rather paint the cracks, the overlaps, and the spectacular failure of everything trying too hard to make sense.
And honestly? That feels like the most honest thing I can do right now.
Location: Mark Hachem Gallery, Beirut
Date: 22 May till 10 June 2025