Lebanon - Art & Culture - Randa Ataya
Nishee
Name of the rose is Randa
Helen Khal
Special to The Daily Star
As Gertrude Stein once described it, “a rose is a rose is a rose is a
rose.” But as the young artist Randa Ataya paints it, a rose is a mood, a
guise through which to project her various states of mind and emotion.
All the paintings in Ataya’s current exhibition at Galerie Fadi Mogabgab are
of roses red, white or yellow. Presented solitary or in multiples, they fill
the large canvases almost from edge to edge. They are heavy and dense in body,
more closed than open in bloom and almost static in movement. The energy they
contain is manifested only by the expressionistic sweeps of pigment that spiral
up and around into petals to form the budding heart of the rose.
In the boldness of her compositional design, Ataya reveals a strong, assertive
confidence that overshadows the romantic concepts she seeks to convey. The
roses are given such titles as “Clarity,” “Illusion,” “Exaltation,”
“Grace,” “Confusion,” “Fragility” or “Flamboyance.” In
expression, however, they combine into one single image that is unified in
emotive content and surpasses the delicate qualities of “rose-ness” to
speak of other, more obdurate realities of existence. She may not know it yet,
but Ataya is pursuing more than romanticism in her art.
For romance without ambiguity, try the poppies, tulips, irises and sunflowers
by French artist Basler, now showing at L’Envers du Decor. They are playful
extroverts, painted with an impressionistic brush loaded with joie de vivre.
Long-stemmed, fully blooming and visibly waving in the breeze against friendly
skies, they stand in groups like people gathered in lively conversation.
There is not a serious thought among them. They delight in nature’s elements
and are simply glad to be alive.
Another French import is Christoff Debuschere at Galerie Alice Mogabgab. An
artist of prodigious skill and versatility, Debuschere is the official painter
of the French Navy. He goes on periodic assignments around the world to paint
pictures that end up on the stateroom walls of ships or in French ministerial
offices. His last assignment was Kosovo, where he recorded in oils its tanks
and armaments and battered buildings.
The collection Debuschere brings to Beirut concentrates on the portrayal of a
much more peaceful environment the interiors of bourgeois French domiciles
furnished in early-modern, libraries belonging to a victorian age and
turn-of-the-century theaters complete with velveted mezzanine loges and crystal
chandeliers.
Here is an artist who paints with a sure hand, a discerning eye and an innate
sensitivity for the subtleties of color and light, no matter what the subject.
His portraits, for example, approach Whistler in quality.
Debuschere, who at 37 is still young for an artist, informs us that his mother
is an abstract painter but that he has never tried his hand at abstract art.
“I don’t feel it,” he says, “and don’t even want to try unless I
do.” To hear these honest words about the evolution of his work is
refreshing. Too many young talents these days jump into abstraction too soon,
simply to be in vogue and before they have assimilated the basic principles of
figurative art.
Also of interest this week are two exhibitions of photography. One, which
closed at the French Cultural Center on Friday, presented a noteworthy
collection of large color prints by Greta Torossian which centered on a theme
of duality, on the contrast between old and new, destruction and construction,
in Beirut.
The photographs, almost a square meter in size and mounted on wood panels, were
striking in composition, color mood and selective detail. Torossian’s poetic
eye frames the drama of old walls, arched windows, excavated ruins and
flowering bougainvillea, starkly overwhelmed by concrete and glass high-rises,
to give us evocative images of disequilibrium that stay in the mind.
We pass by such contrasts every day, but seldom stop to consider their import.
In her photos, Torossian intends that we do. She wants us to see how the
senseless power of man has distorted the character of the city. She wants the
absurd ambivalence of the images fathered by that power to penetrate our minds.
The other photo exhibition, at the Beirut Theater, presents the work of Basma
Asfour Bazzi, a Jordanian now residing in Lebanon. In her collection of small
black and white prints, entitled History of Objects, she utilizes quiet
middle-key tonalities to instill old, discarded objects with a lingering human
presence.
She takes close-up shots of a crumpled wheelbarrow, a torn nylon-cord chair or
a weathered, paint-peeling table as though they were people wanting to have
their pictures taken. And we look at them with vague sadness, as objects worn
out to death by human use, then abandoned along the wayside without a graveyard
to call their own.
Ataya at Galerie Fadi Mogabgab, Horsh Tabet, until Nov. 20. Tel: (01) 500902.
Basler at L’Envers du Decor, Tabaris, Achrafieh, until Nov. 13. Tel: (01)
338177.
Debuschere at Galerie Alice Mogabgab, Sofil, Achrafieh, until Nov. 13. Tel:
(01) 336565.
Bazzi at Beirut Theater, Ain al-Mreisseh, until Nov. 5. Tel: (01) 363466.