Gallery One - Palestine
Beirut Art Fair 2016
Beirut International Exhibition & Leisure Center (BIEL)
Downtown Beirut
Booth: C19
Gallery One is pleased to announce its participation in Beirut Art Fair 2016 with a solo exhibition by Rafat Asad entitled Marj Ibn Amer, a series of paintings reflecting on Palestinian landscape. Rafat Asad, in this series of paintings, has been absorbed in an immense plain, the wide fertile valley of Marj Ibn Amer that lies between the hills of Galilee in the north and the Nablus hills and the area around Jenin in the south. It is a landscape the artist has been familiar with looking at for much of his life.
Rafat’s paintings are deceptive in their apparent celebration of light and air, the colors of the seasons, the patterns of the fields, the gentle slopes of the hills, the edge lands where town meets field; they hide more than they reveal. They are not painted en plein air as Van Gogh did, and if the separation wall is visible in any of these actual views, the artist has not included it. They are an amalgam of the artist’s imagination and memory with the art of painting and the illusionary but liberating space it can so brilliantly create.
Born in Nablus, Palestine, Asad has earned his Bachelor’s degree in Fine Art at Al Najah University in 1998, with a concentration in painting. Though a painter first and foremost, Asad is a multi-disciplinary artist, producing light and sound installations, as well as video and performance pieces. Taking abstract painting as a point of departure, his work has evolved to focus on the Palestinian landscape. As a result, Asad’s more recent work became unique and somewhat minimalist in style.
Asad participated in group exhibitions including; The 11th Havana biennale, Cuba (2012), Colors of Life, Zawyeh Gallery (2014); The First Alexandria Symposium for Mediterranean Arts, Alexandria, Egypt (2015) and many other important group exhibitions in Palestine, Europe, Japan, the U.S and the Arab World. His solo exhibitions include: Visions and Abstracts, at the Child Cultural Center, Nablus (1999); Narrative, at the A. M. Qattan Foundation, Ramallah (2006); Maps, at the Delfina Studios, London (2006); and a solo exhibition, Marj Ibn Amer, at the Zawyeh Gallery, Ramallah (2015).
Asad work is included in a number of collections including Bank of Palestine collection, Dr. Ramzi Dalloul collection, Gerge Al Ama collection, A.M. Qattan Foundation collection amongst others.
FAIR OPENING HOURS:
Thursday, 15 September from 6:00 - 10:00 pm (by invitation only)
Friday, 16 September from 3:30 - 9:30 pm
Saturday, 17 September from 3:30 - 9:30 pm
Sunday, 18 September from 3:30 - 9:30 pm
For press and further information please contact us at: [email protected]
