Charbel-joseph H. Boutros' first solo exhibition in a Belgian museum opens at S.M.A.K.

The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Friday, March 29, 2024


Charbel-joseph H. Boutros' first solo exhibition in a Belgian museum opens at S.M.A.K.
Charbel-joseph H. Boutros, Life, variation #2, 2019-2020. Concrete block, watermelon seeds, Courtesy of the artist, Grey Noise and Jaqueline Martins Gallery.



GHENT.- ‘The Sun is My Only Ally’ is Charbel-joseph H. Boutros’ first solo exhibition in a Belgian museum. Born in Lebanon in 1981, the artist was raised in a country marked by civil war, an event that is not visualised in his work but has an indirect presence. The title of the exhibition, which is taken from one of the artist’s works, is an indicator of his fascination with the intangible and the invisible. Elements such as light, time, breath and sleep, for example, determine all our lives, yet are difficult to record. Charbel-joseph H. Boutros’ artworks are objects, as it were, that capture, register or indicate these and other invisible sensations. A title such as ‘Night Cartography’ reveals that the artist is attempting to make a poetic registration of the night or a period of sleep. The artist’s oeuvre, as a whole, can indirectly be called biographical. Just as an amulet or a photograph can be laden with memories, the objects that Boutros makes are also charged with personal meanings or carry the traces of invisible actions. Occasionally, by reading a description, the origin of the action or event can be traced. The notion of trust therefore becomes an important element in the artwork.

Boutros’ art is thus primarily the result of inner reflections. It comprises precise objects and meticulously arranged ensembles that link an intimate melancholia with the universal, and also with the environment of the exhibition space. The form and material of the artwork are subordinate to this, but serve to preserve the meaning and/or the event. The artist endeavours to reformulate our familiar reality with a minimum of effort, and an exhibition is therefore a kind of geography that is reframed in such a way.

‘The Sun is My Only Ally’, which includes new and recent work, takes the form of an exhibition within an exhibition. The first of these is an ode to ‘The Distance between Your Eyes and the Sun’, a presentation the artist made for the Beirut Art Center in 2019, but which closed the following day due to political unrest and was never reopened. Removed from the public eye, the works remained in situ throughout the exhibition period. Although the version in S.M.A.K. is approximately the same size as the one in Beirut and also includes the same constellation of works, the artist considers it as a new entity with its own specific relationships to the institution, its employees, the space, the oeuvre, the artwork, time... Boutros has developed the second exhibition as an envelope of reflections on the periphery of the first. He places a Seuil de Confiance (threshold of trust) at the entrance. This acts as an entrée to the artist’s world of ideas, an invitation to approach the artworks as witnesses to an existence, and to view them as parts of a sentence written in the space. Dream and sleep, intimacy and love, geography and finally the night could all be titles for the chapters explored in the four other rooms of the exhibition.

For Charbel-joseph Boutros, an exhibition is living matter that he uses to deepen some of his works, but also as a way of entering into atypical relationships with artworks, projects and the public. In so doing, he establishes a dense network of situations, patterns and scenarios. Within ‘The Sun is My Only Ally’, for example, the work The Exhibition Between Us (2019 - 2020) departs from the two people who are the first and last to visit the exhibition. Their names are chiselled onto marble plaques on the spot, which already include the start and end dates of the project. At the close of the exhibition, the entire show is contained within an artwork, sandwiched between two memorial stones and two people. Catwalk (2019-2020) is an elevated footpath that runs along the walls of the exhibition space and may only be used by the museum staff so that they and the visitors must take alternative routes. It has the capacity to generate remarkable images. On the other hand, several of the works in the exhibition have an autobiographical, melancholic undertone such as Removed stone (2020), a rock that Boutros (his surname means ‘stone’ in Arabic) took with him from the mountain near his birthplace and which, after the exhibition, will definitively return to the place where it was originally gathered.

Charbel-joseph H. Boutros works between Beirut and Paris. He was a researcher at the Jan Van Eyck Academy in the Netherlands and resident in the Pavillon of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. Boutros’ work was shown internationally at the 12th Istanbul Biennial, the 3rd Bahia Biennial and the first Yinchuanin Biennale. He has exhibited in the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Punta Della Dogana, Venice; Centre Pompidou, Metz; CCS Bard College, New York; MAMBA Museum of Modern Art, Salvador; Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah and La Criée, centre d’art contemporain, Rennes.

S.M.A.K. purchased the work ‘Dead Drawing’ (2012) in 2018 and included it in the exhibition ‘From the Collection : Highlights for a Future’ in 2020.










Today's News

February 8, 2020

An exhibition of works by Alexander Calder opens at The Neuberger Museum of Art

Sales take a dive at Sotheby's post-Brexit London auction

Sledge and flag from Shackleton's Nimrod expedition at risk of being lost abroad

Man charged as two stolen Banksy works found in Paris

Hamburger Kunsthalle opens an exhibition dealing with the theme of loss

Almine Rech-Brussels opens a museum-quality selection of 22 paintings, created by Antoni Tàpies

Art Central cancelled amidst public health concerns

Vitra Design Museum opens "Home Stories: 100 Years, 20 Visionary Interiors"

Banksy is a control freak. But he can't control his legacy

Noah Davis is gone; His paintings continue to hypnotize

The Courtauld announces the appointment of its first Managing Director, Dr. Tzo Zen Ang

Charbel-joseph H. Boutros' first solo exhibition in a Belgian museum opens at S.M.A.K.

Art in General appoints Irene Mei Zhi Shum as Executive Director

Janet Rady Fine Art opens Fire of Love, Amin Roshan's first solo exhibition in London

The Gujral Foundation opens its first exhibition of the year with Remen Chopra W. Van Der Vaart

Nottingham Contemporary opens a solo exhibition of works by Denzil Forrester

Beyond architecture, a builder of lusty fantasies

Els Dietvorst's first retrospcetive exhibition opens at Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp

Cambodia: War and Beauty photographic exhibition opens at FCC Angkor by Avani

Latifa Echakhch presents a new installation designed especially for BPS22

Modern Art Oxford opens the first ever UK solo exhibition of Johanna Unzueta

Spring 2020 exhibition programme opens at Salzburger Kunstverein

Exhibition surveys the artistic innovations and impact of several generations of women artists in Texas

UOVO Art Storage announces new CEO Daniel Schmerin

'Pornographic' French writer Pierre Guyotat dies aged 80

The Most Expensive Art Ever Sold

10 Tips for Students Who Want to Start a Small Business

4 reasons why online gambling sites became the internet's most profitable companies




Museums, Exhibits, Artists, Milestones, Digital Art, Architecture, Photography,
Photographers, Special Photos, Special Reports, Featured Stories, Auctions, Art Fairs,
Anecdotes, Art Quiz, Education, Mythology, 3D Images, Last Week, .

 



Founder:
Ignacio Villarreal
(1941 - 2019)
Editor & Publisher: Jose Villarreal
Art Director: Juan José Sepúlveda Ramírez

Royalville Communications, Inc
produces:

ignaciovillarreal.org juncodelavega.com facundocabral-elfinal.org
Founder's Site. Hommage
to a Mexican poet.
Hommage
       

The First Art Newspaper on the Net. The Best Versions Of Ave Maria Song Junco de la Vega Site Ignacio Villarreal Site
Tell a Friend
Dear User, please complete the form below in order to recommend the Artdaily newsletter to someone you know.
Please complete all fields marked *.
Sending Mail
Sending Successful