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.
