EXHIBITIONS
This long-awaited exhibition displays the work of the master Samir Sayegh, in an astounding accumulation of artistry created over the past decade, in what is his largest exhibition to date. Several series are shown, from the confinement series created during Covid to the more general, but no less extraordinary, explorations of the Arabic alphabet. From the geometric to the freestyle, Sayegh shares a mesmerizing journey through colour, form and meaning, transporting the eye and heart from one dimension towards many. Here, the freestyle works garner a similar sense of equilibrium to the geometric, in a freedom that transcends their apparent differences. Even the newcomer to the genre can explore these works - a visual mastery in colour and form that delights and transforms, creating periods of peace and deep intensity that can transcend the written word while equally provoking deeper investigation.
The work of French-Lebanese artist Gabrielle Bejani is dream-like, yet somehow defined, deliberate. Although in a state of continual flux, her vibrant paper landscapes are imbued with a kind of undulating geometry, a certain regularity coming up against more organic surfaces shaped by ceaselessly shifting edges, colours, textures, lines, and a cast of characters with a resonance both highly personal and yet recognisable to the viewer. Myriad shades of muted and jewel-like blues, reds and browns, colour rich landscapes of sky-like space, while half-remembered narratives take shape among them.
The haunting presence that proliferates her work is grounded in materiality, the delicate tearing, cutting and arranging of pieces as much a part of the whole as the mushrooming forms and scenographies that dance with fluidity across her compositions. Bejani’s created world gives a feeling of rhythmic, almost metronomic movement, in an environment too large, almost sublime, in its awe-inspiring scale. Her figures, when they appear, perhaps on a boat, or simply curled around themselves, are tiny yet distinct against vast backdrops, almost, but not quite swallowed by the places in which they find themselves.
Here is a stamp of Lebanon, gently placed, tiny among a vast night sky peppered with stars. Her stamps, like her figures, seem to mark the scene with a scale incommensurate with their surroundings; such a small and mobile mark in all that wide, endless space. A deliberate gesture, such lightness and such weight.
Gabrielle Bejani was born in Paris, France in 1995. She is a French Lebanese artist currently based in London. In 2018 she received a BA in Fine Art and History of Art at Goldsmiths, University of London and in 2023 completed her MFA at Slade School of Fine Art (London). Since graduating she has participated in numerous exhibitions in London, Paris, New York and across Europe.
An American who has lived outside of America for more than fifteen years, Everitte Barbee takes seriously the implicit and explicit ideals of his home country. In fact, the rules of American, and indeed western, society at large, seem to fascinate him; the rules, and how they are broken. While the form of his work rests comfortably within an established tradition of Arabic calligraphy, it is clear that the subject rests far outside of the Arab world, that American culture is Barbee’s central theme. Barbee’s evident fascination with the hypocrisy that he sees at the root of Western culture tracks through his art works - Arabic calligraphy satirizing American values. Yet, despite an evident ambivalence towards his home country, the work of Barbee is not cynical, rather is rooted in disappointment, a disappointment in that insincerity that he sees at the heart of a culture that he was born into, is somehow still a part of. And indeed, while Arabic calligraphy is perhaps his most sustained practice to date, his studies in technique are not limited to this genre, rather he is interested in the broader source of culture, the roots of the world. Why do we love art, he asks – a lack of comprehension, the sacred. Barbee longs for the sacred, a return to Eden, roots, something to hold on to.
Through his artworks themselves, as well as his identity as an American artist living in Lebanon, Barbee seeks to challenge what he sees as the misleading narratives of the region that are often told to Americans. By living in the middle east, and in making the work that he does, he seeks to show America that they do not understand this world as well as they might think, to complicate narratives, open minds. His message to America, the western world at large - Arab culture is deep, ancient and kind.
There is a clarity in Barbee’s vision for a world without hypocrisy, seeking this through a return to art as sacred lack of comprehension. Until then, he will present his truth.