Two of my paintings, Vert and Dream, were recently exhibited in Beirut as part of a group show featuring Lebanese artists working across generations and geographies. Both works had previously been shown in New York, where they were created in dialogue with questions of spatial tension, dislocation, and the lingering imprint of place. Presenting them in Beirut was not simply a matter of exhibition. It became an opportunity to observe how meaning evolves when images are viewed within the horizon of their deeper origin.
Vert is structured around an upward movement. The composition is defined by vertical tension, not as a reference to form but as a condition of form itself. The green used throughout the work is sharp, deliberate, and internally charged. It does not allude to landscape or symbol. Instead, it operates as an active field, a chromatic force that organizes space without resolving it. The painting resists narrative or illusion. It constructs a visual logic grounded in energy rather than depiction. In Beirut, the reception of this work was marked by a focused intensity. Viewers seemed to respond to its assertion of presence, its refusal to settle into a familiar or legible image.
Dream, in contrast, presents a more open and elusive field. Composed in yellow, it avoids structural containment. There is no geometry to hold on to, only traces, dispersals, and subtle ruptures. It is a work that hovers between formation and dissolution, inviting a slower, more intuitive kind of seeing. Shown in Beirut, the painting prompted a different kind of engagement. Rather than attempting to interpret it, viewers responded to what the painting withheld. It was not the content that held their attention, but the sensation of unresolved presence. The ambiguity remained intact, yet the surrounding context introduced a new layer of resonance. The painting became less a proposition than an encounter.
This experience made evident that a painting does not return unchanged, even when its material condition remains the same. The shift in context and place activates new readings and generates different tempos of attention. Neither Vert nor Dream were made with Lebanon in mind. However, their presence here formed a kind of quiet feedback loop, a reorientation of meaning shaped by proximity and difference.
In this way, painting is never static. It emerges through a continuous negotiation between form and perception, between what is offered and what is drawn out by the act of viewing. This recent exhibition was not a return in the nostalgic sense. It was a return to potential, and to the complex conditions that make a work visible in a new way.
The exhibition runs till May 17, 2025, at Gezairi Gallery
Link to News at LAU website:
https://stratcom.lau.edu.lb/for-media-professionals/press-releases/2025/05/-lau-1716.php?fbclid=IwY2xjawKJj59leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHrg_5Nss1SAvA-ummPEt5TXApf3paxKRLoIHh_q9inLR0eGz8BL0Ap292w4Y_aem_NGjvjJ2z_TLAddAMolw0rQ&sfnsn=scwspwa
