Young Collectors Auction - exhibit-E

WalidEL MASRI1979Lot 001'Chairs' Signed, Dated120 X 60 cm. Mixed Media on Canvas 2009Estimate (US$ 3,500 - 5,000)Provenance - Directly from the artistThe paintings of Lebanese artist Walid El Masri possess what one critic referred to as the"bravura and technique one rarely finds in the work of someone his age." Born in Beirutin 1979, he is a graduate of the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus and has participated innumerous group exhibitions and art fairs at home and abroad, including in Europe, Asiaand the US. Solo exhibitions at the China International Gallery Expo and Art Hong Kongin 2009, established his popularity with not only Asian collectors but international artlovers.Considered one of the Arab world's most exciting young talents, he has been given soloshows in Damascus, Dubai and Paris and has been featured in a number of Ayyam'shigh profile events such as its competition for emerging artists in 2007 and its "YoungCollectors" auction in 2009. The recipient of several awards, he has won prizes at variousworkshops and contests in Syria.Experiments in palette and composition revolve around a relentless examination of asingular material subject—a simple chair. Yet this inanimate object possesses a startlingpower, as it functions as a point of departure for greater investigations into the fundamentalcomponents of painting.Like Morandi's vases or Cezanne's apples, El Masri's depictions are less about the objectsthemselves. What we find instead is an apparent resolve to reconfigure compositionalproperties, as he toys with depth and space, alluding to meditations on art and life andmoments that are suspended in time—profound explorations that have attracted a largepool of art aficionados from across the Middle East.