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The Babel exhibition by Georges Merheb, held at the Mark Hachem Gallery until May 23, 2024, explores the genesis and reinvention of language through works combining painting, ink and collages.
Georges Merheb, a painter and architect by profession, in his exhibition titled Babel shown at the Marc Hachem Gallery, takes us back to the genesis of writing, to the time of its first steps. The artist uses all mediums, oil or acrylic painting, ink and collages to immerse us in a strange and labyrinthine universe.
From his perspective, Georges Merheb revisits the very concept of language, initially intended to convey ideas and facilitate exchanges, in order to reinvent its rules as he sees fit. Playfully, he deconstructs the written language, strips it of its literal meaning and utilitarian function. He borrows all visible features to explore their aesthetic potentialities, making them the very substance of his art. His work is thus inspired by certain distinctive signs of the Greek alphabet or Arabic calligraphy and is inscribed in cryptograms, primitive tracings, and series of thick black and colored lines jostling to invade the canvas.
Georges Merheb thus reappropriates language, freeing it from its linguistic weight to create an original writing marked by a unique imprint born from his own feelings. The artist focuses on the lines and curves of his brush. He lets himself be guided by his intuition, the beauty of the gesture, the sensuality of forms, the emotion of the moment, to create new images and evoke new sensations.
The artist then tries in his own way to regulate the movement and rhythm of this scriptural dismemberment, to reorganize the scattered elements, to revisit the meaning. Oscillating between precision and spontaneity, he declines the notes of his musical composition to redefine its character, extract the pure essence, and create a new harmony.
The artist takes us on a journey through his enigmatic space not to decrypt it but to guide us through this labyrinth to seek our own identity, to reinvent our own codes. He also encourages us to reconnect with our singularities, to rediscover and liberate our inner space to let it breathe.
He makes us visit a place of silence and abstraction, invites us to detach ourselves from imposed and reductive meaning to sharpen our own senses. He frees us from the injunction to rationality, to arbitrary conceptualization. By moving away from all conformism, the painter especially favors instinct and letting go to generate emotion and poetry. By breaking the codes of propriety, he liberates a space of individuality and creativity.
To abandon oneself to one’s artistic momentum, to dare to change perspective to promote the renewal inherent in life and creation, isn’t that the ultimate goal, the dream of every artist? Come and experience this unusual and playful experience until May 23, 2024, at the Marc Hachem Gallery.
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