Lebanese artist Chucralla Fattouh has a wide artistic experience and these experiences can now be enjoyed as “The Language of Sunset” exhibit opens in Gallery Sarah on December 1.
Under the patronage of Her Highness Dr Sayyida Mona bint Fahd al Said, Assistant Vice-Chancellor for International Cooperation at Sultan Qaboos University, Fattouh brought with him some of his pieces that best represents where he is at as an artist.
He graduated from the College of Fine Arts of the Lebanese University in Beirut in 1983, since then the Fattouh has dedicated himself to art. From 1985 to date, the artist has conducted more than 150 group and personal exhibitions in art galleries and festivals in Lebanon and abroad including the Americas, Tunisia and Brazil. The artist also exhibited in Bait Muzna Gallery in Muscat in 2015.
He participated in many national and international exhibitions and auctions, such as the Bonhams Art Auction House and recently at Sotheby’s, and received many awards and honours, most notably the Queen Elizabeth II award in 2007, in his participation in the live painting of the charitable horse race in the annual Gulf Polo Cup in London.
The artist belongs to the Lebanese coastal village of Monsef. In the early sixties, and since his childhood, he used to observe the waves, the sky, and the clouds that took root in his memory. Inspired by the beauty of his fair coastal city, he painted those scenes and colours full of life that he saw every day. The artist was able to create for him an artistic imprint that can be distinguished from any other artwork by the symbolism of the characters, and the minimisation of flat geometric shapes in the spaces that surround the subject.
As for the current exhibition at Sarah Gallery, Fattouh presents his recently produced works from the Sunset Language series, which was the main inspiration for this collection in the coastal village of Monsef. This collection takes us on a journey to the artist’s world of bright vocabulary and formations, where his works explain the inner self or an essential personal vision of the sunset and its impact on the world.
He says: “Sunset Language Group tells the story of sun whispering her secrets before disappearing at sunset, passing between the bodies of her loved ones and changing their language from an auditory language to a visual language full of warmth and silence.” The artist documents this moment and he called it the new language of the sun and painted it to preserve the language of sunset.
In addition, the artist presents his series “Living with a foreign body”, where the artist says that the whole world lives with foreign bodies daily. At first, they become afraid, and then gradually they begin to adapt to the foreign bodies around them, so they become part of their world. Here, the artist captures the image or the first impression of this encounter, which carries many ambiguities, raises the question of the viewer, and the artist does not tell the story but leaves it to the viewer to imagine and explain it.
Fattouh has been an inspiration to his sons and his influence had led them to also pursue careers in art. One of his sons shares with him a short film of his production and artworks in the current exhibition.
Artist Nicholas is a visual artist and film director. Graduated from the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts with a master’s degree in Animation, he participated in more than 30 exhibitions and auctions locally and internationally including Bonham (London) where he sold six paintings in 2016.
In 2018, Nicholas debuted the film “How My Grandmother Became a Chair” was awarded the Robert Bosch Stiftung Film Award as a German-Lebanese co-production during the Berlinale. Today, this award-winning short film has been selected in more than 80 prestigious festivals around the world (10 Oscar-qualifying festivals) and has won 21 awards including the Sundance TV and Carthage Awards.
“The Language of Sunset” is open from December 1 to 11, 2021 from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm — from Saturday to Thursday at Sarah Gallery in Bait Al Zubair Museum.
For more information about the exhibition, inquiries can be made at 22084747 or visit the gallery’s social media account.
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