Loading ...An Arab world of diversity
BEIRUT: Mixed-media art can be a treat for the eye. No doubt this is why so many artists working within the otherwise conventional confines of paint and canvas enjoy employing materials that add weight to a work, and perhaps surprise the onlooker.
Many of the pieces in Mark Hachem Gallery’s “Arab Collective Art Exhibition” are mixed-media works from established Arab artists, though the show includes sculpture and conventional painting as well.
From a distance, Charbel Samuel Aoun’s vivid “One Year of my Life,” may seem an overwhelming concoction of colors and textures. Closer scrutiny of the canvas suggests a method to the visual madness.
Strings of cotton and tiny wood branches that the artists apparently gathered from his garden protrude from beneath colorful coats of paint. There’s a flowing feeling about the piece. Similar to blooming flowers in spring, vibrant splats emerge from what looks like the outline of a tree. “This painting is about many feelings that we experience in nature,” Aoun told The Daily Star. “I experienced many states within the same painting.”
Chaouki Chamoun’s “Back to Playing with Colors,” is a more subdued and buoyant use of color. Coats of azure acrylic flood most of the canvas. The bottom of this serene sea is disturbed by vibrant shards that appear to pierce through. Oddly enough, the entire scene resembles a surreal aquarium with lines of tiny figures gazing upwards from their secure white space near the edge of the canvas. Other pieces evoke more unsettling emotions.
Rabee Kiwan blends what looks to be dark dyes and paint to create gloomy sights on canvas. Divided into three strips of fabric, tinges of pinkish blue and beige saturate the two fabrics on the edge. Meanwhile, the center strip is covered with black dye and paint. Two barely visible heads float in the dark matter, their eyes replaced with giant black circles with one of them awkwardly smiling.
An imaginative synthesis of paint and yarn, Fatima Mortada’s “Lady Macbeth,” features a woman sleeping atop a threadbare black blanket. Elongated threads of yarn that cling to her body recall the silk designs of a spider web. Unlike her upper body, which is covered by a painted bra, her lower half is embellished with another skirt-like knit blanket.
Violence, fighters and their weapons are frequently aestheticized in art, so there’s little that’s groundbreaking in Thaer Maarouf’s “Hawen.” The canvas is compelling nonetheless. The artist depicts a washed-out boy holding an RPG launcher against a rich green background. Bundles of grass cover the canvas, nearly obscuring his solemn expression.
Contradiction seems to be at the heart of an untitled work by Shadi Abousada. Over a torn and faded collage of Arabic news articles, the artist depicts three young boys, carelessly playing on a motorbike. The work’s juxtaposition of the dreary with the jovial is further cemented with the white charts of tic-tac-toe that layer the piece.
While a cohesive curatorial concept may be absent from this show, the elaborate mélange of works in “Arab Collective Art Exhibition,” may appeal to those in the mood for a bit of late-summer variety.
“Arab Collective Art Exhibition” is on view at Mark Hachem Gallery through Sept. 16. For further information please contact 01-999-313.
Source: www.dailystar.com.lb