Ghassan Zard is a Lebanese painter and sculptor born in 1954. He lives and works in Beirut.
Read MoreHe has participated in multiple group shows such as “Vous avez dit abstrait?” Galerie Tanit, Beirut, 2013. L’approche de la peinture et de la sculpture, réveille en nous l’innocence de nos jeux d’enfant. Pour cela l’œuvre de Ghassan Zard est teintée de nostalgie, d’un besoin de retour à l’émerveillement de l’enfance, à l’amusement comme concept. Les êtres disparaissent en flocons, en lambeaux colores. Il se crée une séparation entre la pensée et le ressenti. Inexplicable torsion de l’esprit, qui mène a une reconstitution presque automatique qu’on ne perçoit qu’ultérieurement ! Ce cheminement est aussi un acte pour conjurer la folie meurtrière et transcender l’angoisse du quotidien. Ces sculptures seraient-elles une projection pour de futurs totems ? Un advenir en construction ?
Initially his painting was influenced by lyrical abstraction. His large-scale canvases depict a coloured rhythmic universe reminiscent of music partitions. Compared to his pictorial work, his sculptures are more restrained but always tinted with irony.Combining polished wood, aluminum and raw steel; Zard creates a bestiary of forms, interpreting the anatomy of reality to recreate a personal mythology. Playful by all appearances, his sculptures hide something that is deeply settled in the artist’s approach. Beyond the shape, something tries to come to the surface, the naked wood, full of life, is stapled with a rigorous but intermittent violence. It seems to contain a body in the making, a tacit entity, however, extremely present, waiting in the heart of every piece. Dreamlike animals become a metaphor for human beings and represent an artist’s desire to give a protective and ludic shape to an old “souvenir”. Buried in the subconscious digression, this sculpture can be read as the return of the repressed, skillfully formed, skillfully mastered.
Text courtesy Galerie Tanit.
