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The Saleh Barakat Gallery is currently hosting a remarkable and deeply meaningful exhibition titled The Turn, a solo work by the young and talented Syrian artist Anas Albraehe, who now resides in Lebanon. Albraehe boasts a record of solo and group exhibitions in Lebanon, Jordan, the United States and other countries.
In search of authenticity and human truth, the artist dwells on the state of sleep. He believes that in this unconscious universe, the individual returns to the simplicity of their nature, regardless of social status, religious or political affiliations, qualities, or flaws. In sleep, they become pure and true. In this state, individuals are indistinguishable from one another. All of us must sleep at some point. We all need sleep, and it is in this state that humans return to the source of their being and rediscover their species’ similarity.
In a world of warm and vibrant colors, Anas Albraehe paints his sleeping characters and lets them escape into their dreams. His dreams are populated with landscapes of natural, serene beauty.
About forty large-format oil paintings depict sleeping figures in natural settings. There are skies, mountains, trees, seas, clouds, and horizons as backgrounds. These natural landscapes would themselves come to life independently of the sleeping figures.
The artist explains: “Earth is a dwelling place. It is necessary to understand my work in such a way that, if I were to remove the rotating bodies from my paintings, I would be left with an image of a picturesque landscape. Conversely, if I were to do the opposite, if I removed the landscape from my paintings, I would be left with an impression of a black spot on my canvas.”
The black spot is the mass of hair on the head of the sleeping figure. Its posture is only understood when the landscape is present. The opposite would be incomprehensible and unnecessary. Hence, the power of nature intertwines with that of the human to give substance to a human being.
The character changes position and turns (hence the movement of rotation, the title of the exhibition) towards nature. When we see their face on the canvas, the observer’s attention is solely on that face, possibly ignoring the landscape.
The opposite would be completely different. If the sleeping character’s head is turned away and their face is not visible, the natural landscape then takes full prominence in the composition, emerging as the main and inseparable element of the painting. The natural landscape then dominates the observer’s field of vision.
During the journey through this exhibition in the beautiful space of the Saleh Barakat Gallery, one discovers a bed placed at the center of the paintings. One feels the urge to lie down and is invited to listen to the artist’s poem, composed in Arabic.
“The house becomes a mountain, the dream a river, and the tumultuous wave is silence.
The face is stone, and the body is plain.
Color is a country, and the country becomes a cover.
The cover is a desert, and the map of the country becomes a cloud.
All images, memories, happy or sad moments have mixed in my mind.
I then painted my body drowned in my inner self.
I wanted the human to find justice.
I wanted them to feel their own soul. I wanted them to be true.
I then found them asleep.
Sleep so that you may become more sincere. Sleep so I can see in you the will of God, truth, and justice.
Sleep so you are earth in the soul of the sky.
Sleep so you become a canvas that tells the story of one who sought truth but found only sleep.”
At the center of this bed, which becomes the center of the exhibition and the world of dreams, the artist offers us colorful blankets and headphones that allow us to be carried away by his poem and to sleep in the midst of his paintings.
All the paintings consist of landscapes where characters sleep in beds made of mountains, earth, and clouds. The brushstrokes blend with the silence of sleep, gliding over the canvases with confidence and strength.
The works of medium and larger dimensions are unanimously titled Dream. A single, monumental-sized work, placed opposite the bed, is titled Nightmare. It indeed depicts a war occurring in the middle of the landscape, where the central character sleeps. Although it’s a nightmare, the colors are vibrant, and the battle seems to end in a ceasefire.
There is poetry and dreaming, light and color, escapism, and drama. This exhibition is a moment of return to oneself that allows the visitors to reconnect with the essence of their humanity.
This project, initiated by the artist about four to five years ago, continues and will be exhibited until February 17 at the Saleh Barakat Gallery.
