EXHIBITIONS
The Affirmative Happiness of a Green Dot
Alight with movement, the paintings of Hala Schoukair are delicate and yet full of presence, if not heavy with weight. This most recent body of work sees a shift in scale and intention, examining the moment of repetition, her connection with nature, and the gradual and organic build-up of marks. Her drawings, yet comprised of marks reminiscent of her paintings, demand an intimate connection. Held up to the light, rows of tiny punched-out dots and sewn lines, occasional and surprising objects drawn directly from the natural world, complex differences and similarities, tell the story of her personal journey with the unique directness of close work on paper.
Intensely detailed and repetitive, each mark, and each larger structure created from those marks, retains an individuality, a trace of the artists hand, her moment with that mark. This long, attentive moment, outside of language, full of emotion, is the vital force of Shoukair.
Recently, Hala’s work was part of the ARABOFUTURS exhibition at the Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris (October 2024 - January 2025). She has also participated in the Abu Dhabi Art Fair in November 2024 and 2023, and had a solo exhibition, represented by Gallery Bessiere, at Art Paris 2022. Her previous solo shows included You Promised Me Spring (2017), and Grains of Light (2014), both of which were held at Agial Art Gallery in Beirut.
Recent group exhibitions included Intimate Garden Scene by Ashkal Alwan at Sursock Museum, Beirut (2023 - 2024), as well as the museum's 32nd Salon D’Automne (2016). She has also participated in the Morgenröte, aurora borealis and Levantin: Into your solar plexus at the Knusthalle Bern in Switzerland (2015), as well as the Continuity and Change: Islamic Tradition in Contemporary Art at the Williamsburg Art and Historical Center in New York (2007).
Hala’s work became part of the permanent collection of LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) in 2024, and the Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, IL, in 2023.
Hala moved from New York to Lebanon in 2019, and currently lives in the town of Ras El Metn, where she has established The Saloua Raouda Choucair Foundation, which commemorates her mother’s art and legacy.
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.