EXHIBITIONS
From concrete, from what is most often overlooked, Anachar Basbous has created the new, harnessing a sensitivity that winds its way around accretive forms hewn from concrete blocks, working back into his own walls, with a softness that comes from the porous insides of the material and finds its way out.
Basbous is renowned for his expertise with simple forms, technical excellence, his ability to shape raw material into the unexpectedly pristine, for charting a unique course within a powerful artistic familial legacy. He knows art, knows forms, knows the way to create. What he can do with materials is impressive and powerful, at times sensitive and gentle, but the territory that he has entered for this exhibition, his preceding qualities touched with a uniquely humble softness, this is new.
Sculptures takes half of this exhibition, the rest is taken by large wall panels in relief, swirled rubble, carefully arranged parts, definite and poetic, ruined and complete. While the concrete sculptures of Basbous hold a concern with formality, a faith in the material, form, that keeps lyricism at a distance, this resistance to symbol sees a shift in his wall-based works. Here there is a more painterly poetic, a feeling of narrative, story. At times this too finds a resistance, a lightness of touch competing with the sheer weight of the material.
Combined, these works have the capacity to remind the viewer of the simple building blocks of life, the growth of what has been and what is yet to come. In their subtle balance of the aged and the new they provide a moment to look from the outside in, to become strangers to ourselves, yet still right at home.
Anachar Basbous was born in 1969, Lebanon and lives and works in Rachana, Lebanon. After graduating from high school in Beirut, he moved to Paris to attend the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Appliqués et des Métiers d'Art (ENSAAMA), where he studied architectural wall design. In 1992 he returned to Lebanon, opening his own sculpture workshop in Rachana and dedicating himself to stone, wood and metal sculptures, as well as wall sculptures.
Recent solo and group exhibitions include; Saleh Barakat Gallery, Beirut, Lebanon (2018); Lumieres du Liban, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, France (2021); Between shadows and lights, Art installation /Art in motion, Ixsir, Lebanon (2022); Artcurial Sculptures Monaco, Claude Lemand Gallery, Paris, France (2023); Anima Gallery, Qatar (2023); Bonhams / Claude Lemand Gallery, Paris, France (2023).
His sculptures can be found in public and private collections across Lebanon and the rest of the world (Canada, France, Singapore, United States, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates). In addition, his works have been acquired by the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris and Christies, London.
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.
Lebanese artist Mazen al-Rifai is deeply indebted to a modernist landscape tradition, his work resting comfortably within this oeuvre. There is a treatment of a specific light, the place of Baalbek, and a crystallisation of that place into distinct, more or less abstracted forms. A rapt attention to the contrasting qualities of colour and shade, light and dark, soft and hard, provide depth and belie the complexity of the subtle shifts that he seeks to describe. One side of the canvas is warm, another cool, one line dissolves into a layer below, and another splays out at its edge while remaining just that, the edge. Layers of paint tempt the eye, yet remain mostly obscured, only a sense of depth and the glimpses caught at the edge of one form as it becomes another, show the careful accretion of paint over time.
In his maturity as a painter Rifai has entered new ground, bringing with him a firm understanding of where he came from, and a tantalising glimpse of where he might go next. His current work sees a move into form that can morph beyond landscape, yet gifted with that light, those colours that refer always back to the land of his heart, the Bekaa. Look closely and you will see that Rifai is reaching for the human, the soft and the hard, body and soul. The jewel like forms of one painting are a high contrast to the absolute softness and subtlety of another. At times, soft and hard play out in the same painting, and there is a reach towards a new dimension, the form in the world taking new and unexpected shape and meaning.
Mazen Rifai (b. 1957) was born in Baalbeck and lives and works in Beirut, Lebanon. He holds a degree in interior architecture from the Lebanese University, Beirut and a degree in Fine Arts from the Academia de Macerta, Italy. Between 1987 and 1993 he was professor of fine arts and the head of department at the Lebanese University and is also an art director at the firm, Engineers, Consulting & Contracting. Since 1981 he has held many solo exhibitions in Beirut and Paris. These include exhibitions at; Epreuve d’artiste, Galerie Rochane, Galerie Aida Cherfan, Gallery 6, Agial Art Gallery, Galerie 34 Bonaparte, and Galerie Alex Menem. He has also participated in numerous editions of Sursock Museum’s Salon d’Automne starting in 1974. In 1984, he contributed to the Beirut Central District Reconstruction Plan with Oger Liban and is a member of the Baalbeck International Festival Committee. Rifai has published two books: Baalbeck in Black and White with Dar Al-Nahar in 2007, Baalbeck 1981-2011 with Fine Arts Publishing in 2011.