The dazzling gold leaf installation by Zad Moultaka welcomes visitors to the Beiteddine Palace during the exhibition's inauguration. (Credit: Nabil Ismail)
Despite the cancellation of its music festival this year out of solidarity with Gaza, as declared by its president Nora Joumblatt, the Beiteddine Palace, nestled in the beautiful Chouf mountain, opens its doors to visitors during the day. As every year, the visual arts take up their summer quarters in its ancient vaulted rooms. This is an initiative by the Beirut gallery owner Saleh Barakat, who works to decentralize and promote Lebanese art in the region.
After presenting exhibitions of works highlighting both the collection of paintings (Hidden Treasures) owned by the Emirs' Palace and the evolution of Lebanese abstract art in previous editions, the gallery owner and curator is now programming two exhibitions there until the end of September.
Zad Moultaka's exhibition in the square hall. (Credit: Nabil Ismail)
The first reveals its golden colors, inspired by Venetian magnificence, from the grand courtyard of the palace, where a majestic installation named Lahab celebrating the power of the sun, entirely made in gold leaf by Zad Moultaka, stands.
In line with the same spirit as Oro Tenebris, this musician and artist's exhibition, presented two months ago at the Tanit Gallery in Beirut and curated by Nayla Kettaneh-Kunigk, continues with a series of painted works expressing a "Prayer to Darkness." In the chiaroscuro of a square room with stone vaults, they find the ideal setting for the impression of archaic power and mystery they convey.
The Lebanese landscape in its variations
The second exhibition, dedicated to the Lebanese landscape, is divided into two complementary parts. It features figurative representations of South Lebanon created in the 2000s by Abdel-Hamid Baalbaki (1940-2013) on one side, and a selection of paintings immortalizing the specific nature of various Lebanese regions signed by contemporary Lebanese artists with varied techniques and styles on the other.
A painter passionate about social realism and a fine arts professor at the Lebanese University, Abdel-Hamid Baalbaki left his mark on an entire generation of talented contemporary artists.
Tapestries by Mazen Rifaï, the Beqaa’s painter. Photo courtesy of Tanit art gallery.
Initially focused on depictions of street scenes and genre scenes meant to be understood and appreciated by the popular classes, it was only in the last decade of his life that he devoted himself to landscape painting, spending his time painting the lush nature surrounding his native village of Odaisseh where he had retreated as if he sensed it was necessary to immortalize its original serenity before disaster…
A view of the exhibition, with paintings by Oussama Baalbaki in the foreground. Photo by Nabil Ismaïl.
"For these green hills and olive fields that one sees in his oil paintings are today mostly unfortunately reduced to ashes by Israeli aggressions," says Saleh Barakat. To soften the sadness of this observation, Barakat chose to highlight in the second part of the same exhibition, the "pluralism of the Lebanese landscape" through a collection of pictorial and photographic works inspired by typical landscapes of the various regions of the cedar country.
Examples include the Bekaa plains celebrated in paintings and tapestries by Mazen Rifai; Mount Sannine represented in colorful abstraction by Ribal Molaeb; the cedars of Tannourine immortalized in an old photographic technique by Jack Dabaghian; the giant umbrella pines of the mountains repeatedly depicted under the brush of Nada Matta; the junipers of North Lebanon thriving in the oils of Hassan el-Samad; or the South and its horizons portrayed in his eerily calm canvases by Oussama Baalbaki (son of Abdel-Hamid).
