In his last exhibition, at The LT Gallery (from November 2 to November 15), Jean-Marc Nahas focused more on the “content” as an intended goal than on a visible reality.

A collaboration between established Lebanese artist Charles Khoury and a renowned winery marks this festive month. This collaboration is further enriched by an exhibition of Khoury’s works in Mar Mikhael. Known for his work in painting, sculpture and lithography, Khoury skillfully combines primitive forms with bright, playful colors in his creations.

Under the title “Resilience”, The LT Gallery in Beirut is holding an exhibition of the works of the Lebanese artist Jean-Marc Nahas. These works are the artist’s latest production, and they seem to reflect what was stated in the accompanying press release, which stated that the “Resilience” exhibition reflects: “an introspective exploration of Beirut, a city that we cherish deeply. The works serve as a mirror that reflects the conflict between the city’s fragility and constant anxiety.” Which is devastating those who live around it.”

Under the title “Resilience,” the Lebanese painter Jean Mac Nahas presents a number of his works in the last two years. About 25 works of medium and small sizes, presented by LT Gallery on Mar Mikhael Street in Beirut. These works constitute a continuation and a complement to what the artist began in his previous exhibition, “Beirut À La Folie” as he continues his journey in simplifying and emptying the painting until it is almost devoid of the characters that embrace it and are its heroine, and the pink color that accompanies it as a single background for most of the paintings.

The multidisciplinary space While We're Young (WWY) combines female commitment. This upcoming exhibition, scheduled for Wednesday the 4th of October 2023 at 6 pm, introduces seven emerging female artists, who employ various approaches to create artworks inspired by the achievements of their renowned predecessors. From a representation to a dissolution of form, colour sometimes asserts itself in its own quality. 

The multidisciplinary space, “While We’re Young (WWY),” embodies the feminine commitment. This upcoming exhibition, to be unveiled on Wednesday, October 4, 2023 at 6 PM, showcases seven emerging female artists, each with distinct practices, producing works influenced by the legacy of their esteemed ancestors. From representation to the dissolution of form, color occasionally asserts itself in its inherent quality.

The artistic scene in Beirut is rarely devoid of the opening of one or more art exhibitions weekly. Sometimes, the same evening witnesses more than one opening. The faces seen at these exhibitions become familiar to gallery-goers, especially during opening days, which become occasions for artists, their friends, and art enthusiasts to gather and discuss paintings, artworks, and their collections.

The Lebanese visual artist Fatima Mortada believes that women more than others express the dialectical relationship between humans and nature. Through her style based on material diversity, she elevates this expression to the status of a preserver of collective memory, safeguarding what remains of humanity.

Dans le foisonnement d’accrochages artistiques de ce début d’été en ville, il devient difficile, sinon inutile, de tout voir. Pour vous aider à choisir votre parcours des galeries en fonction de vos goûts et centres d’intérêt, voici une sélection – forcément subjective et non exhaustive* – des meilleures cimaises beyrouthines du moment.

There is a Great Difficulty in approaching the paintings of the painter Annie Kurkdjian, who delves, in composition, style and "topic", into the buried layers of the intimacies of the human soul, its experience, feelings, and states, where the whispering, silent tenderness, compassionate and merciful person is able to open the door at all the ultimate psychological and philosophical dialogue going on within the self.

"Entering the exhibition of the Lebanese artist Fatima Mortada titled 'MEMORY KEEPERS,' which concludes today at ' The LT Gallery' in Beirut, feels like stepping into a private home. Her exhibits, carefully placed in this relatively narrow space, seem to have granted the walls a unique life, making the visitor feel like a stranger in front of them. One senses the need to introduce oneself to these artworks, to delve into them and let them get to know the viewer. Each of these walls appears as if it has its own story, or has a story to tell."

Fatima Mortada explores the relationship between humans and nature in her new exhibition 'MEMORY KEEPERS,' hosted by The LT Gallery until the thirteenth of this month. Bold artistic experiments, diverse techniques, strange worlds, in a blend of compositions on canvas, drawings, colorings, and figures made of fabric, acrylic, Chinese ink, pencils, fabric pieces, threads, and watercolors.

Rawad Ghattas pushes forward in artistic achievement on curtains or banners as a preliminary approach to the place he inhabits, through an exhibition hosted by 'The LT Gallery' in Mar Mkhayel from May 2nd to the 10th. The artist resides at a junction between the age of the elephant, Burj Hammoud, and Al Nabaa, allowing him to observe the buildings and their proximity, thus witnessing the density of the hanging banners in a striking manner.

The new exhibition by Lebanese artist Jean-Marc Nahhas comes to bring a qualitative shock in his artistic experience, in which colors, especially pink, confirm their presence in his visual text after he was imprisoned for years in bleak darkness to reveal the artist’s relationship with Beirut.

Jean-Marc Nahas (1963), who was not new to the world of painting and drawing, and who had a previous presence in calligraphy and color decoration, brings us a different style and different colors in his exhibition “Beirut À La Folie,” which opens today at The LT Gallery (Mar Mikhael - Beirut). There is a difference between simplicity, simplification, and Nahas's new style. In this exhibition, he tends to the second approach, simplifying the divisions within one painting (separate frames within one frame) and the different characters, situations, and ideas between which he tries to create harmony, but he rarely succeeds in doing so.

The heroes painted by Jean-Marc Nahas in his new exhibition at WWY Gallery, Mar Mikhael,  are not hypothetical, delusional, or imaginary. They are real, realistic, and they live among us, and here, and now, they live under the roof of despair, violence, horror, and death, but they do not yield or surrender, but rather take life with strength, and love it. Nahas do not hesitate to openly present moments and situations that testify to how they seize and hunt them and bring them to their spaces, playgrounds, and personal possessions to celebrate them.

Lorsqu’un scientifique prend le pinceau, et que des symboles et des formules de mathématiques découlent de son art pour devenir des éléments magiques, des compositions fortes en couleurs et en émotions, on ne peut que déduire que l’informatique de gestion et le parcours d’ingénieur, sont également sources d’esthétique et de divagations fantastiques.

"I use fabric and threads in my artistic works, and these are materials that I professionally create. This choice did not come by chance or a desire for change and uniqueness; rather, it is a choice closely connected to the theme I work on in my paintings. I conducted research on this technique for over ten years. I believe that my motivation was to reevaluate textiles, weaving, and embroidery, attempting to reintegrate them into the core of artistic work after being stripped of their artistic value and reduced to household chores performed by grandmothers."

As you come across works by emerging Lebanese visual artists focusing on the human face within a very close timeframe, both influenced by shared circumstances like the economic crisis, quarantine measures, and the Lebanese uprising, it might be challenging not to draw connections between the two. Here, we refer to the visual artist Sarkis Cesarion and the Lebanese-Syrian sculptor Ghassan Ouais. Starting from their distinctly different visual texts, there is a crystallization in understanding the works, particularly arising from their significant differences in execution and the ideas presented.

Annie Kurkdjian's exhibition (1972) appears to be more than an exhibition of more than one theme. A violent, sweeping definition of body and facial transformations. An explosion of repressed violence and war between Armenia and Lebanon, where the instincts of the body and scattered faces were unleashed. The formations, lines, and shapes in Annie’s painting have a subjective nature in which external elements dissolve. She searches the body's entrails for secrets and nightmares in a style that refers us to the world of Colombian artist Fernando Botero. A simplified method of coloring that also recalls the experiences of French painters from the nineteenth century who were inspired by the worlds of the Marquis de Sade and his brutality with the female.

Perhaps the most striking quality that encapsulates Annie Kurkdjian's Ludique exhibition is feistiness. That's what the title says first. The exhibition hosted by The LT Gallery in Mar Mikhael presents the viewer with thirty diverse and recently occupied paintings. Kurkdjian is still working on a single-climate painting. Therefore, attributing the characteristic of quarrelsomeness to the paintings, or to some of them so to speak, it does not come from an empty perspective. Rather, it is the result of an impression that the painting engraves on you, whether in terms of its theme that is out of the ordinary and pushes every time to break the taboo and various types of legacies, or in terms of its ability to surprise despite its path in a single and similar pattern.

It is the first solo exhibition for the young artist Ryan Eid, whose artistic journey is not born out of emptiness. He captivates us with small drawings he created at the age of five, depicting wild animals and relatives' cars, along with scribbles and words in French, directing us towards his childhood world. He lures it out through large and medium-sized artistic paintings, charcoal works, and sculptures of monsters made from painted industrial metals. His interpretation involves a conflicting interplay of color and drawing through rapid design and an artistic adventure full of uniqueness and skill, fraught with dangers.

While classical art adheres to rationality, proportion, appropriateness, taste, and proper standards, Annie Kurkdjian presents her works at "The Lt Gallery" in Mar Mikhael (starting from the 17th of this month) and she does not closes herself off to imagination and the unpredictable. Her mood is fluctuating and unexpected. Emotion, sensitivity, and violations of form are clear evidence of the absence of the immunity of reason, leading to illusions and whims, specifically. Her works gradually detach from the social system.

Works that focus on women in their various roles and positions, whether through mythology, such as Isis, Asherah, and Inanna, or through women from the three monotheistic religions like Khadijah, Mary, and Zuleikha, or contemporary representations of women. 

As someone who works in writing, I know well that I can enter an idea through the eye of a needle. However, as soon as I immerse myself in it, I transform into a tortured being unable to contain the agony. I rush to exit this cold, dark tunnel that hints at a complete and conclusive end. Sometimes, I emerge before the idea completes its play and role. I leave it to itself, to the reader, to myself, if I have the courage again to return to it and engage in a dialogue with teeth and bones, while it converses with me through stabs and pricks.

She is Inanna among the Sumerians, Asherah among the Phoenicians, Aphrodite in ancient Greece, Venus among the Romans, and also, for the Lebanese artist Fatima Mortada, a focal point in her paintings that triumph for women against both individuals and society. Through her artwork, she returns to scatter a great energy of love and beauty.

Depuis près de deux semaines, les murs de The LT Gallery à Beyrouth sont recouverts de corps féminins mêlant morphologies humaine et animale, et associant une grande variété de techniques allant de la peinture au dessin, en passant par le tricot ou le tissage. La galerie située à Mar Mikhael accueille l’exposition « Inanna Ascends » de l’artiste libanaise Fatima Mortada jusqu’au 10 février 2022.

If there is a need for an explanation of art, we should look at the artists' proposals themselves by immersing ourselves in their activities as hot, perplexing, shocking, and provocative experiments, breaking away from the 'common artistic trends.' This is what the artist Fatima Mortada suggests and advances in her solo exhibition titled INANNA ASCENDS characterized by its surprising and unsettling features, at The LT Gallery from January 20th to February 10th.

Those who know Fatima Mortada well understand that she is passionate about the unconventional, for various reasons. There are methods followed in dealing with life's matters at all times and on every occasion. This is our collective situation, as we choose what we find suitable for us or aligns with our beliefs. However, the nature of choices does not adhere to the same norms, sometimes sticking to individuality without considering the opinions of others, except in a relative sense. In other instances, individuals make many calculations to avoid falling into the 'forbidden,' and this forbidden is also, in itself, relative, complex, and varies greatly from one place to another.

The LT Gallery in Beirut is hosting an exhibition for the Lebanese visual artist Fatima Mortada titled 'INANNA ASCENDS' The exhibition includes numerous paintings distributed throughout the gallery, some of which are large pieces and others smaller, in addition to two bronze sculptures carrying the same theme.

The LT Gallery kicks off its cultural season this year with a joint exhibition TOUCHPOINT featuring Lebanese and French artists at its new venue on Asfahan Street, branching off Armenia Street - Mar Mikhael, and at the TOTA restaurant, as well as in the Art Corner gallery in Tabaris.

To welcome Taher Jaoui, Musk and Amber opted for simplicity. Clear space, freed walls; the gallery set aside its usual extravagance and abundance to give free rein to the burst of colors from the artist. "Burst" is indeed a mild word to express the polychromatic and formal explosions that Taher Jaoui indulges in and offers us on the theme of 'Jamboree'.

Currently showing at REDSEA Gallery in Dempsey Hill are paintings by TAHER JAOUI. We learn more about this self-taught artist, including the inspiration for his artwork in Singapore.

In this interview, he explores the keys to his success, his technique, his experience as a street artist in Berlin, his relationship with mathematics, and his vision of the future of digital art and online sales.

Emergeast sits down with Taher Jaoui for an exclusive interview.

"The Ibizan architecture of this space combines majestically with my work," asserts the Tunisian artist residing in Berlin.

In the works of the Lebanese artist Mansour El Habre, there is a tendency towards improvisation in shaping colorful spaces. He employs the collage technique (cutting and pasting) in the majority of his treatments for these spaces. However, instead of preserving the cutouts of colored papers that he adds to the surface to form the scene's features, he chooses to remove them after a calculated time, ensuring that the color has settled on the edges of these cutouts. Then, he comes to disrupt the corners of this assumed stability when he swiftly removes those cutouts again from their place, leaving their mark on the surface as a cloudy ghost of color. It is an adventure with undoubtedly unpredictable results, but he never tires of repeating it, seeking to affirm the atmosphere of spontaneity and improvisation that dominates his color treatments.

Mansour Al-Habar is presenting a collection of his works in a joint exhibition with Lebanese and French artists on a virtual platform organized by the 'LT Gallery' in Beirut and the 'Yellow Cube' gallery in Paris. Mansour Al-Habar, a Lebanese artist and university professor, has held solo and group exhibitions in Lebanon, Europe, the United States, and Arab countries.

A meeting with the visual artist Simon Mhanna, founder of The LT Gallery, which collaborates with the French Yellow Cube Gallery to organize the “Beyond Borders” exhibition in Paris.

This exhibition enhances exchange between Lebanese and French artists and opens new horizons for Lebanese art, especially after the Beirut Port explosion on August 4, 2020.

The Lebanese artist Fatima Mortada perseveres in developing her artistic narrative during the past two years, which have been marked by significant global changes and, particularly, by notable transformations in Lebanon. Her works, shared on her Facebook page, serve as evidence of this artistic evolution, undoubtedly contributing to capturing some of the features of the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and the unprecedented economic, social, and environmental disasters witnessed in Lebanon.

The Lebanese visual artist Mansour Al-Habar continues to evolve his artistic narrative, which has never strayed from his passion for the logic of collage that he embraced since the beginning of his artistic journey. Today, in the virtual gallery resulting from the collaboration between the Lebanese 'The LT Gallery' and the French 'Yellow Cube' Gallery, he presents numerous new paintings where collage has become not only his closest artistic style but now appears as a raw material from which the artwork is formed.

Born in Tunisia and now based in Berlin,  Taher Jaoui has lived many lives as an engineer, an actor, and an artist. While it might not seem like these three career paths have anything in common, Jaoui’s background in mathematics and financial engineering has had a profound impact on his artistic style and identity. The three new bodies of work in “Controlled Entropy” merge colors, numbers,  and mathematical principles, presenting moments of both lucidity and chaos. Organized in conjunction with Uncommon Beauty, the exhibition is Jaoui’s first solo show and is now up at 81 Leonard Gallery through February 28th

À défaut de pouvoir ouvrir ses portes au public à Beyrouth, la LT Gallery présente une sélection d’œuvres de ses artistes à Paris, au sein de la Yellow Cube Gallery.

"In the midst of these challenging times that we are going through as a country, every member of this community is suffering greatly to earn a living,” said the spokesperson of The LT Gallery to The961.

“One of the many sectors passing through rough times is the once vibrant art scene, which is witnessing an unprecedented free-fall especially by the immigration of promising young artists, collectors, and enthusiasts alike,” she said.

The artist, known until now for the darkness of her universe, presents under the title 'LUDIQUE' a new series of works imbued this time with a satirical, mischievous, and even risqué spirit.

Taher Jaoui was born in Tunis, Tunisia and currently lives and works between Paris and Berlin. His work has already been exhibited in various group and solo exhibitions across Europe, Africa and the USA.

Fatima Mortada is an artist that some might call subversive. Working primarily with mythology, sexuality politics, gender, and identity, she has been experimenting with a wide range of techniques and materials, from drawing, engraving, and painting to sculpture, installation, film, weaving, and sewing.

The young artist Simon Mhanna (25 years old) had to find the best and most creative ways for Lebanese art to have a platform that embraces his untamed colors and highlights his ability to shine through various styles and mediums.

The Lebanese artist Fatima Mortada left her studio in Beirut in order to come to Barcelona for a month with her manual knitting machine. In her hands, the knitting machine –which rescued so many family finances in Spain in the ’60s and ’70s—goes beyond the domestic realm and becomes a tool of political and artistic action. Along with Mortada, artists from Morroco, Palentine, and Tunisia are participating in the Xabaca project, a web of artists opposed to the censorship and abuse of women. This project is supported by the organizations Novact, Al Fanar, and Jiwar Creació y Societat.

Fatima Mortada is an emerging Lebanese artist who graduated from the Lebanese University with a first class honours Diploma in Fine Arts in 2007.
In 2009, she moved to the UK to pursue higher education at the university of Southampton, Winchester School of Art where she got her MA in Fine Art (with distinction) in 2010, and a full 3 year scholarship for the PhD programme.