The why of landscape
a glancing projection carves
and caresses
presses buildings, renders sky
The work of Hala Ezzedine exists only barely within the world of perspective, hovering between abstraction and recognisable form. The drawings and paintings in her forthcoming exhibition Portrait of Beirut for Saleh Barakat Gallery, rendered in acrylic, pencil and sanguine, are landscapes, and so retain the possibility of the viewer entering the scene. Yet, the subject remains resolutely obtuse, fleeting.
Ezzadine’s powerful cityscapes forgo the shape of the world for its volume, depth and space, and her work exhibits a powerful yet glancing quality. Colour and tone work seamlessly to guide the viewer in and around the picture plane giving each work a pure energy that is, one feels, unique to that image alone.
Hala Ezzedine (born. 1989, Arsal) received both Bachelor and Masters degrees in fine arts from the Fine Arts Institute at the Lebanese University, in 2009 and 2014 respectively. Since graduating she has been the recipient of a number of distinguished prizes and awards. In 2015 she was awarded the prestigious Boghossian Prize for Painting and in 2016 the Génération Orient First Prize, L’Orient Le Jour, Beirut. In 2019 she was recognised by the emerging artist prize of the 33rd Salon d’automne of Sursock Museum, Beirut and in 2021 was awarded the best first-time solo exhibitor for the ‘gallery’ magazine prize. Between 2022 and 2023 she participated in a six month art residency at the Cité Internationale des arts Paris and in August-September 2020 the artist Residency of the Analix Forever Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland.
Her first solo exhibition was held in 2018 at Agial gallery, Beirut, followed by a second also at Agial titled ‘In Search of Light’ in 2020. In 2019 she was a participant in the 33rd Salon d’automne of Sursock museum, Beirut, Lebanon and in 2018 was a participant in the CAB International Art Symposium 4, Amman, Jordan. In September 2021 she participated in the “LUMIERE DU LIBAN”exhibition at the Arab World institute and in the same year was a participant of “THE WOUNDED ART” - “L’ART BLESSÉ” at Villa Audi.
What quiet places, full of possibility
It has softness, the coal, not the silky softness of a child (we will return to the child) but dense, wild, and somehow mute, a softness that refuses speech, sound.
Baalbaki’s coal structures are familiar if ambiguous. Neo-classical architecture melds with places of worship, old forms that creak and tug, slipping between the civic, philanthropic, religious. But it is the material that takes over, seizes the mind and pulls us into form, The joy of the attempt, the human in the world.
This work began in innocent instinct, the coal seen as children’s blocks for building. Through play Baalbaki works his way deep into soft blackness and out into the adult world. From there, he renders what are perhaps the most adult of edifices, temple, church, mosque, museum, bank.
It’s a work of faith, a reach for connection felt more than explained. In the softness of coal, its healing, velvet coat, and in our knowledge of its properties, its scarcity, its increasingly golden allegory, there is a contemplative moment, a reflection on what it is that drives us, what we really need.
