19 August 2011

BEIRUT: Wouldn’t it be nice for all the people from the Middle East to gather in one room and share the many disparate views and passions that they all share in common, without religious, geographical or cultural boundaries getting in the way.

Such was the notion born in the head of Lebanese gallerist Razan Chatti, and she has made her fantasy come true by renting a space in Mina al-Hosn’s Platinum Tower for a three-month-long art exhibition.

“AFAK” (Horizon, in Arabic), as this unusual exhibition is called, gathers the works of 25-odd Syrian, Lebanese and Iraqi artists, with the goal of showing the Middle East as a region of artistic evolution.

“I wanted to gather Arab art and make it international … to show that art can go beyond frontiers” said Chatti.

Though the exhibition is overwhelmingly comprised of paintings, “AFAK” certainly does suggest this is a region of artistic diversity.

What The Gallery has, that other curator-driven exhibition spaces may not, is a unique degree of freedom in themes, origins and media.

As the exhibition title would suggest, the object is to make viewers regard art as a horizon. “The only limit to art,” Chatti laughed, “is the sky.”

In his 95x110 cm oil-on-wood work “Untitled,” Syrian painter Louay Kayali portrays a thoughtful-looking boy in knee-pants sitting among some antique clay jars, holding a glass of water. It is a mundane, if nostalgic image but Kayali’s media make the work more attention-grabbing.

The more common surface for oil paint, of course, is canvas which can contribute to, among other things, the chromatic and sculptural aspects of a work, as layers of paint in thick brushstrokes project from the canvas to give the work depth and weight.

Using a particle board panel as a surface, as Kayali does here, conveys a completely different impression. As the paint is partially absorbed by the surface, the particles of the surface remain a dominant feature of the image and are never covered by it.

There is also an ironic juxtaposition between the medium and the message, as it were, as the sentimental nostalgia redolent in the image is undermined (or reinforced) by being composed upon an industrially-manufactured surface.

“Darwich et son oiseau mort” (“Darwish and his dead bird,” oil-on-canvas, 2011, 100x100 cm) is one of three works in which Lebanese painter Raouf Rifai takes up one of the motifs fondly worked by Europe’s 19th-century Orientalist painters – the sufi sheikh who, through repeated physical practices (chanting, movement, what have you) seeks personal ecstasy with god.

Rifai’s painting isn’t rendered in the romantic style of the Orientalists, though – it is a cubistic work. Cubism may be as much a historical throwback as Orientalist romanticism, but, as an expression of the modern, it still brings an air of irony to the work.

The irony is underlined by title of the work itself, pointing out that the Darwish’s head is thrown to one side, his expression twisted, not in an the ecstasy of devout whirling but in an ecstasy of anguish born of catching sight of a dead bird.

Though the title sounds morbid, there is less of a mortuary feeling arising from Rifai’s painting than a comic one.

“Rakisa 2” (oil-on-canvas, 70x170 cm) by Iraq’s Tahseen al-Zaidi confronts the viewer with an eerily supernatural, albeit slightly comic book, image. At first blush you may not decipher explicit shapes in the work’s blotches of green, yellow and purple.

From the appropriate remove, though, the swirl of color resolves into the representation of a female fighter – she seems armed in any case. Gazing at “Rakisa 2” is like looking at a fairytale creature in a graphic novel of the fantasy genre and the effect on the spectator is about as disturbing.

“AFAK” works to collect all this region’s genres of painting within a single exhibition, including the confusing kind.

“Black Magic Woman” (oil-on-canvas, 100x100 cm) by Lebanon’s Lulu Baasiri, for instance, may not provoke reactions from its viewers. Although it clearly took a lot of work to execute, this work is more puzzling than pleasing.

The painting depicts a woman’s (poutily symmetrical) full-face portrait lashed to a scaffolding along with another, smaller but virtually identical portrait, and a talisman that includes the shrunken head of a bearded, horned man.

You may seek some insight from the title. Though the woman depicted here could be of African ancestry, she could just as well be from anyplace else in the Mediterranean littoral or points west. It seems the magic is meant to be conveyed in the charms hanging from the portrait. Anyway it doesn’t penetrate the spectator.

A few of these paintings may not please all viewers, but “Afak” does succeed in suggesting that art transcends frontiers.

“AFAK” is on display at “The Gallery” of the Platinum Tower, Mina al-Hosn, until Sept. 30. For more information please call 01-867-865 / 03-292-576.

Copyright The Daily Star 2011.