EXHIBITIONS

Joseph El Hourany

Retrospective (1995-2020)
Joseph El Hourany

Using morphing and mutation tactics, my sculptures are not pretending to be a particular innovative aesthetic. It looks much more at the overall interplay between the initial idea/sketch and the used wood or material. In its abundance making, a procedural experimentation is the origin of the unpredictable forms. As such, experimentation in sculpture has nothing to do with neither composition nor style. In whichever creation process, it has to do with no‐finality, with the perpetual path to another form; it provokes what comes after, what appears, and what will be seen. It can spontaneously absorb additions, subtractions, and technical modifications, without disturbing its essential order.

Joseph El‐Hourany is an architect and urban planner who lives and works in Lebanon. He is also titular of two bachelors in philosophy and musicology. From 2006 till 2010, he conducted a doctoral research at MIT in cotutelle with UQAM about parametric design. Since 1999, Joseph is working on several architectural and urban planning projects; besides, he is teaching in different universities. He published “The Future Of The Past” with John Carswell in 2003, “Specimen 0” in 2010, “Specimen 1” in 2011, “Guvder” in 2012 and “Henri Edde architecte” in 2019. He participated in “Aley Symposium” (1999), and exhibited several versions of his “mind maps drawings” at LA CENTRALE (2007, 2008), UQAM (2008 ), Museum St‐Hilaire (2008), Stata Center (2009) and ALBA (2011).

Joseph El Hourany
Retrospective (1995-2020)
19 March - 15 May, 2021

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Samar Mougharbel

Art de triomphe

"This whole body of work was made this year! After the October 17th Revolution, amidst the economic crisis and the corona virus pandemic, and more tragically after the 4th of August 2020 explosion.
It is the gravity, the distortion and the guts... the first time I feel the work extruding from me, and not wanting to stop flowing...
It is the flow-clay deciding to go its own way.
Am I, again, a witness?" -Samar Mougharbel

Samar Mogharbel (b. Beirut, 1958) is an artist whose practice is based in ceramics. She trained with the first modern ceramic artist in Lebanon, Dorothy Salhab Kazemi, before pursuing a postgraduate degree in ceramics at Goldsmith’s College in London. An instructor of ceramics at the Lebanese American University since 1983, Mogharbel has also been involved in the postwar excavations of downtown Beirut, which has greatly influenced much of her subsequent work. Her solo shows include Without Traces (2015) and Interception (2011) at Agial Art Gallery, Beirut; Face Efface (1999) at Galerie Janine Rubeiz, Beirut; Beirut Blues (1998) at Millesgarden Museum, Stockholm. She has participated in group exhibitions in Argentina, China, Croatia, Egypt, France, Jordan, Lebanon, Malaysia, Turkey, the San Dominican Republic, and the United Arab Emirates. She has received several awards, including the Macsabal Competition Award; (2018); the Silver Plaque at Zagreb Clay Fest (2014); the Teapot Art Prize, China (2010); the first prize at Salon d’Automne, Sursock Museum (2006); and a special mention at Salon d’Automne, Sursock Museum (1998). Since 2019, she is a member of International Academy of Ceramics.

Samar Mougharbel
Art de triomphe
11 December, 2020 - 16 January, 2021

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Yazan Halwani
Hotel Beirut or Mundane Entropy
8 April - 15 May, 2021

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Yazan Halwani

Hotel Beirut or Mundane Entropy

Yazan Halwani, a finance specialist and artist, is famed for his graffiti murals of popular national icons such as Sabah, Fairuz, and Mahmoud Darwish. For his latest body of work, he has shifted from the production of public murals to a studio practice that he has developed over the last 3 years. This work consists of three series of narrative paintings that present scenes of daily life in Lebanon. Together these series attempt to dispel the myths of Lebanese exceptionalism centering on the successful expat, the Phoenician, the Lebanese polyglot. Halwani’s work sheds light on the inextricability of economic downfall and migration in Lebanon from within the fabric of a total system of free-market, financialized capitalism.

Yazan Halwani is an artist born in post-war Beirut, Lebanon, where public spaces were lacking, and the lack of art infrastructure made art and design highly undemocratic and inaccessible to the public. He was led to create installations in the public spaces to allow everyday people to reflect on their own identities and challenge dominant narratives in a highly sectarian, normalized post-war environment. His public artworks have frequently gone viral and are embraced as landmarks within the city. He earned his undergraduate degree from the American University of Beirut, and his graduate degree from Harvard University. His work has been featured in international publications, such as The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Economist’s 1843, and in exhibitions in the USA, France, Germany, Tunisia, Ivory Coast, Lebanon, Jordan, UAE, Bahrain, and Singapore. His work can be found in private and public collections around the world, including The Arab World Institute in Paris, the Barjeel Art Collection in Sharjah, and the KA collection in Beirut.