An abstract yet romantic tribute to the human condition

04 April 2008

Review

BEIRUT: It sometimes seems the phoenix has become a mascot of national pride in Lebanon. By the same token, the mythological bird that regularly rises from the ashes of its destruction to be reborn isn't entirely unfitting for a country where self-destructive tragedy and resilience seem opposite sides of the same coin.

"The Wounded Phoenix" is one of the paintings among Hassan Khazaal's exhibition "Seconde 1," currently on show at Hamra's Galerie Zamaan. The show comes as a pleasant surprise, not least because Khazaal never underwent any formal art training. "I started at the age of 4 with a pencil," he said. "At 7 I experimented with watercolor, then at 9, oil."

There is an inclination to see the phoenix as worn out from repeated (usually cliched) use. Khazaal's white-and-blue version of the bird - not red as you would expect - is also in part a battered, wooden fishing boat slung out over a cliff edge, as if it failed in its flight to freedom.

This phoenix is set against a horizon of clouds tinted with sunlight, suggesting it is aching to find spiritual freedom. The painting is ambivalent about the future, however, an ambiguity that imbues Khazaal's work with subjectivity, despite its use of a symbol that, in the Lebanese context, is a trifle hackneyed.

Comprised of 26 acrylic-on-canvas paintings in surrealist style, "Seconde 1" is a wonderful display of elemental works that address the existential and metaphysical, while focusing on tradition and nostalgia, set in a classical idiom. These works are the product of two years of work from the Baalbek-born artist, a place of incubation and sublimation, he explains, where he paints "from the soul."

There is a pronounced spiritual dimension to Khazaal's work, implied by the muse motif that runs through several of his paintings. "Primordial Matter of the Shepherd" draws upon a peasant in the desert, playing his flute that subsequently lifts him and the rock on which he sits to a higher spiritual plain.

Like all the figures in Khazaal's work, this one is without a face. Rendered in a captivating emerald green that contrasts nicely against the desert ochre, he lifts himself as "he plays from the soul" Khazaal explains, with his muse apparent in the background - an obscured phantom-like entity. He personalizes the 70 x 50-centimeter painting by adding a Lebanese touch to it: An abandoned picnic lays nearby but the typical tomatoes, olives and bread he says are missing, hence "he feeds his soul with his music."

"The muse" or "the soul" features in several of his works. Particularly intriguing is the spindly flute player in "Rain Prayer," with ethereal blues and greens depicting another barren landscape that equally witnesses a spiritual metamorphosis.

There is also a sense of paying homage to his homeland with prominent excerpts of Baalbek life that, given the classical forms prevalent in his work, is omnipresent. Decaying blocks of Roman stone feature regularly. "Toasting Bacchus" is an abstract offering in which flying ruins encircle a violin with breasts, which plays before minute green men with glasses raised to the God of Wine.

Khazaal uses the color purple to evoke Baalbek more simply and implicitly. In "Violet Childhood," for example, we see a purple aubergine burst forward from its frame, a faceless, purple family, a few ruins elegantly strewn in the background, and some olive trees. Aubergine is a key symbol of Baalbek, as is the ubiquitous purple-hued "pensee" - the flower that, Khazaal says, is responsible for staining his memories. He points out that in the three-person family in "Violet Childhood," the mother is the largest of all three, suggesting she is the "force majeure."

He attributes greater significance to the feminine in "The Flight of the Pigeons." This tribute to his mother shows an empty nest (bar a button and lone feather) which owes its foundations to the support of the female branch (a branch with feminine hands, eyes and other features). This feminine motif is also evident in "My Grandma and Her Friend," a tribute to his grandmother featuring a flower-headed female form.

"The Escaping Soil" is stylistically reminiscent of Salvador Dali. Here, a house takes the shape of an oud that weeps as it is being played by a larger being. The melancholic expressions of the minute figures in the scene below echo the sentiment.

"Yes, I am aware of the similarities to Salvador Dali, of course, but my style comes from within me," insists Khazaal. "It is individual and doesn't carry influences from such artists." Labeling his nostalgic collection "mes souvenirs," his defiance rings true with his personal interest in home and land, themes that seem to resonate with so many Lebanese artists.

Surrealism is concerned with exaggeration and emotion and, while there is nothing particularly shocking in "Seconde 1," it is in this sense surrealist.

"Eastern Jazz" is one of several paintings where music and free-flowing expression are surrealistically rendered. The five-line staff encircles a faceless figure playing a voluptuous cello, all radiating the same twilight blues and purples; a female figure looks on elegantly, in a graceful pose.

This work celebrates gender, with the classical forms of man and woman represented with simple aesthetic beauty. In "Mood," two lovers are entwined in a sublime, green union, rising abstractly from a male shirt. "I love to paint beauty," Khazaal says. "Women, men, desire, music, sunshine, moonshine. Beauty."

There is also a resonating response to war and political afflictions, which seems a recurrent theme in Lebanese art.

"Race to The Unknown" depicts a running race across a barren wasteland that he describes as a race of futility - rather as he would depict the 2006 war as a competition of futility.

"The Escape at the Moment of the Explosion" portrays a barren wasteland through which an eyeball rolls (evidently a symbol of the Lebanese people fleeing an uncertain fear) while its family and homeland - personified by a knobbly tree made up of human forms - desperately stretches its branches outward.

Khazaal's art is not ultimately concerned with political woes, although its influence can't be ignored. "It's a positive reaction about life and about Lebanon," he says. "Yes, the war was an influence but an indirect one. My work is not overly concerned with the war or with the current situation."

This may explain the prevalence of folklore - such as the dabkeh folkdance in "Dancing With The Soul" - and elemental representation of the land to convey traditions, carried from generation to generation, rural romanticism and nostalgia. If you are in need of comforting aesthetics, or of an abstract-romantic reminder of the human condition, then "Seconde 1" is not to be missed.

Hassan Khazaal's "Seconde 1" runs at Beirut's Galerie Zamaan, Hamra, through April 5. Please call +961 1 745 571/2 for more information