EXHIBITIONS
This long-awaited exhibition displays the work of the master Samir Sayegh, in an astounding accumulation of artistry created over the past decade, in what is his largest exhibition to date. Several series are shown, from the confinement series created during Covid to the more general, but no less extraordinary, explorations of the Arabic alphabet. From the geometric to the freestyle, Sayegh shares a mesmerizing journey through colour, form and meaning, transporting the eye and heart from one dimension towards many. Here, the freestyle works garner a similar sense of equilibrium to the geometric, in a freedom that transcends their apparent differences. Even the newcomer to the genre can explore these works - a visual mastery in colour and form that delights and transforms, creating periods of peace and deep intensity that can transcend the written word while equally provoking deeper investigation.
For the painters and poets, Laura J. Braverman, Amy Todman and Afaf Zurayk, of Faith in the Forming painting and poetry share an equal weight, though not a weight that can be measured on a scale. Rather the balance is one of knowing what is already there, what is coming from within. A word can be placed beside every painting, but this is hardly the point. Rather, for some, the painting or poem might arrive alongside its neighbour, might suggest itself perplexedly. Indeed, the relationship of the poem to the painting may be unclear, perhaps must remain a little unknown, because the painting and the word, though related, reach toward singular spaces, both of which continue to unfold alongside one another.
Gebran Tarazi (1944-2010) was a purveyor of the counter-history of ornament. While his work most closely resembles Josef Albers in its chromatic, optical, and geometrical variation, Tarazi’s practice was grounded in artisanal work. To him, ornament was neither cosmetic, nor supplementary; it provided the basis for a vernacular language rooted in an oriental modernism, and one which was imagined by the orient itself.
Tarazi was born into a family of artisans and antique dealers in Damascus. He spent his early life in Morocco, studying at the École des Frères de Lassalle in Rabat. He moved to Lebanon with his family in 1959 and enrolled in the International College in Beirut. Following a degree in economic law that he earned from the Saint Joseph University in 1967, he worked as an antiquarian. In parallel, he pursued independent research in the fields of literature, archaeology and the crafts which shaped his approach to painting through the four decades of his artistic practice. In 1978, he wrote a novel entitled “Le Pressoir à Olives”. With the central oriental relationship between the text and the image at the forefront of his mind, he continued to juggle between the literary and visual arts. After his family business shut down in 1986, Tarazi left the city for the mountains and initiated his research in geometrical abstraction.