For Beirut With Love

FOR BEIRUT WITH
LO
VE
1

FOR BEIRUT WITH LOVE
29 OCTOBER - 20 NOVEMBER 2020

PREFACE
In the wake of the terrible incident that deeply impacted
Beirut on the 4 th August 2020 and destroyed an important
part of the heart of the city, Opera Gallery had to respond. Not
only because our Beirut location is located in the perimeter of
the explosion, but because it is one of the crucial missions of
Art to convey messages. Today, we wish to express love. Our
love for Beirut, our love for Art, and our love for all the Beauty
there is in this world.
To me, Lebanon is a work of Art where the artist combined
not only colours, strokes, lines, and beauty,
but also attempts, failures, setbacks,
comebacks, dreams, emotions, and faith.
– Salwa Chalhoub, Gallery Director
Since the dawn of times, Beirut has always been a unique
location. Inhabited since before 5000 BCE, it is one of the
most ancient cities in the world, showing that its pristine
location always was ideal to mankind. Throughout our
country’s hectic history, Beirut fell, then rose again. Long
before being the Pearl of the Middle-East, Beirut was a
phoenix. Today, we still believe in its resilience, in its power to
rise from its ashes. It is to contribute to this rebirth that Opera
Gallery Beirut organises an exceptional show: eleven artists
have generously donated artworks for Lebanon. Paintings,
sculptures, photographies, all mediums are gathered under
this powerful message of Love we wish to give. We are so
very grateful for the artists’ contribution.
All the proceedings of this exhibition will go to a selection
of esteemed Lebanese NGOs: Arc-en-Ciel, Beb w Shebbek,
Caritas and Offre Joie. All aim to rebuild the devastated city.
Come join us and be part of this message of Love we wish to
send to Beirut and its people.
Gilles Dyan
Founder and Chairman
Opera Gallery Group
Salwa Chalhoub
Director
Opera Gallery Beirut

Michel Abboud
Sentinel
2018
Unique piece
Painted wood
45 x 25 x 25 cm - 17.7 x 9.8 x 9.8 in
2

James Austin Murray
Stardust Tinker
2017
Oil on canvas over panel
91,4 x 91,4 cm - 36 x 36 in
4

Sundus Al Khalidy
Reborn
2020
Acrylic on canvas
120 x 120 cm - 47.2 x 47.2 in
6 7

George Morton-Clark
Black Penny
2020
Enamel and charcoal on canvas
170 x 50 cm - 66.9 x 19.7 in
8 9

Yasmina Alaoui &
Marco Guerra
Yasco 30
2018
Photography
76,2 x 76,2 cm - 30 x 30 in
10 11

Quim Bové
The Phoenix
Ink and pigments on
300 lb. cold press Arches paper
56 x 76 cm - 22 x 29.9 in
12 13

Golnaz Fathi
Beirut’s Flames
2020
Mixed media on canvas
150 x 100 cm - 59.1 x 39.4 in
14

Hallie Hart
Ethereal 4
2020
Acrylic on canvas
61 x 61 cm - 24 x 24 in
16 17

Nick Gentry
Combination 2
2018
Crushed compact disks, oil paint, graphite,
resin and mixed media
122 x 180 cm - 48 x 70.9 in
18 19

Alfred Haberpointner
W-XTNZ
2016
Stained spruce wood
170 x 123 cm - 66.9 x 48.4 in
20 21

Ellen von Unwerth
Milk, Kate Moss
1995
Colour inkjet on baryta paper
Edition of 3
207 x 150 cm - 81.5 x 59.1 in
22 23

BIOGRAPHIES
Michel Abboud is a Lebanese painter,
sculptor and architect who was born in
1977, in Beirut, Lebanon. After completing a
Masters in Architecture at the University of
Columbia in New York, he founded an awardwinning
architectural practice, SOMA. His
designs, notably the Park 51 Islamic Cultural
Center a few blocks from Ground Zero in
New York City or the One at Palm Jumeirah
in Dubai, have attracted critical acclaim for
their boundary-pushing nature.
In recent years, Michel Abboud has begun
to combine art and architecture first by
conceiving large-scale parametric sculptures
and then by creating complex and intricate
abstract paintings. For the latter, he uses
a variety of techniques and materials. He
experiments with the texture of paint and the
way it is applied onto the surfaces as well as
with the support itself: the canvas, stripping it
from its frame, slicing and folding it. Through
his different series (Gemini, Layered, Folded,
etc…) he creates two and three-dimensional
very unique artworks, obscuring the
boundaries between painting and sculpture.
His work is rooted and linked to his heritage,
heavily influenced by his childhood in a wartorn
environment, exuding emotions that can
only make one reflect on the nature of one’s
inner conflicts.
Michel Abboud is the recipient of numerous
awards and his artworks are held in many
prestigious public and private collections
worldwide. He lives and works in New York City.
Yasmina Alaoui is of French and Moroccan
descent, born in New York in 1977. She
studied Fine Arts at the École du Louvre in
Paris, and earned a BA in Sculpture from the
College of William and Mary, Williamsburg.
She currently lives in New York city.
The underlying themes behind all her
works deal directly with her experiences of
multicultural upbringing and aims to bridge
extremes by embracing opposites: secular
and holy, classical and contemporary, order
and chaos, repulsion and attraction. She
creates complex and intricate visual works
using a wide variety of techniques, which
she combines in an authentic manner. Alaoui
has collaborated with photographer Marco
Guerra on the Tales of beauty and 1001
Dreams series, which have been collected
and exhibited internationally since 2003.
Since then, Alaoui has diversified her projects,
stating that her love for different media leads
her to use as many as she can, constantly
shifting between sculpture, painting, drawing,
fashion and jewelry design, film making and
musical composition.
She was the recipient of the Award for Cultural
Diversity at the 2018 Dakar Biennale.
Sundus Al Khalidi was born and raised in
Baghdad, Iraq. She graduated from the
Fine Arts College of Baghdad University
to pursue a passion she was born with. In
2003, she moved to Lebanon, where she
currently lives with her family. Sundus Al
Khalidi has believed that both reality and
imagination reflect her mission. Her practice
offers a feminine, expressionist approach to
the world. Her paintings are inspired by the
world of dreams, and visions from the edge
of consciousness.
Captivated by the wonders around her,
her Art is natural, symbiotic. She creates
compositions inviting the eye to contemplate
the abstract reality in her work.
Al Khalidi’s work has been selected for several
personal and group exhibitions around the
world: 4*4 Exhibition, Italy, 1999; Different
Dimensions, Germany, 2000; Plastic Arts, Italy
and Spain, 2002; The Beauty of Nature-USEK,
Lebanon, 2018.
Constantly inspired by her surroundings,
her paintings came into life to illustrate the
world from her own perspective: a canvas of
feelings and beauty.
James Austin Murray is an American painter
born in 1969. After graduating from Parsons
School of design, he spent some time in
France, Slovakia and Hungary.
Murray’s practice has evolved from more
figurative drawings to his current signature
black paintings. He has pursued, for the
last decade, a gesture-based approach to
monochrome abstract painting using ivory
black oil paint. Murray’s work, immediate
as it is organic, draws its strength from the
reflective qualities inherent within the paint
he uses and the physicality of the visceral
brushstroke left behind. The unadulterated
pigment allows for the texture and movement
of the paint to come through, while the
overall piece evokes Zen sand gardens with
the quiet raking of the paint. His work is
meditative and gestural, yet precise in his
technique: the flat surface expands and
contracts, ripples and pulses, leaving the
viewer with a clear sense of movement.
Murray’s works are exhibited extensively
in galleries across the United States and
internationally, and can be found in various
public collections. He was the recipient of
different awards and artist residences.
Quim Bové is a Catalan artist currently living
and working in Los Angeles, known for
his Symbolic Abstract paintings executed
through his dynamic brush strokes, reflected
across his multiple collections.
Bové has maintained a fascination for the
philosophy of mankind and the Universe.
His works are an expression of the dynamic
universal forces of energy, motion, and
gravity. Done in oil and enamel and coated
with a resin gloss, his paintings offer abstract
interpretations of these concepts. His
restlessness for experimenting with different
techniques brought him to evolve and create
his unique and distinctive style, in what he
calls “My own calligraphy” represented in the
Architecture of the Universe ongoing series.
Bové’s work was influenced by Abstract
and Surrealist compatriot painters such as
Dalí, Miró, Tàpies and the Contemporary
American Abstract movement.
He believes that colour is the most
important element in his paintings, as it
represents the energy of the universal
forces he explores. His works often feature
concentric overlapping circles of loosely
painted bold lines against a background of
saturated colour; such gestures are meant
to illustrate the pull of gravity on forms,
evoking planetary orbit.
A trained calligrapher, Golnaz Fathi has
the ability to skillfully transform known
language into form and composition. Having
discovered calligraphy while studying
graphic design at Tehran’s Azad University,
she later left to train at the Calligraphy
Association of Iran for six years. As a result,
Fathi was the first woman to win an award
for Ketabat, a distinct genre of calligraphy.
She soon tired of the discipline’s rules and
regulations and thus created a new form of
expression in her paintings: an imaginary
language deeply rooted in Persian tradition
while simultaneously hinting at a social
renaissance.
24 25

Her paintings carry traces of meaning
that have no known coded alphabet. The
strength of her work stems from the drive
to express emotions that cannot be pinned
down into words; Fathi’s works succeed
where language fails.
She has presented solo shows in New York,
Shanghai, London, Beirut, Hong Kong,
Singapore, Paris and Dubai amongst others.
Her works are housed in the collections
of many prestigious museums such as the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York;
Asian Civilization’s Museum, Singapore; the
Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, Brighton;
The British Museum, London; Carnegie
Mellon University, Doha; Museum of Islamic
Art, Kuala Lumpur; Devi Art Foundation,
New Delhi, Denver Art Museum, Denver;
World Bank, Washington D.C. and The
Farjam Foundation, Dubai.
Nick Gentry is a British artist born in
London in 1980 who graduated from
Central Saint Martins. He currently lives and
works in London.
His art is influenced by the development
of consumerism, technology, identity and
cyber-culture in society, with a distinctive
focus on outdated media. He is best known
for his floppy disk paintings and film negative
artworks, placing an emphasis on recycling
obsolete media and the reuse of personal
objects as a central theme. His portraits and
installations treat the human form not simply
as the subject in itself, but as the vehicle to
carry the medium.
His works were featured in numerous
prestigious galleries and institutions around
the world. In 2017, he participated alongside
notable artists such as Mark Quinn or Gavin
Turk in The Tusk Rhino Trail, a London-wide
art exhibition. His sculpture in St. Pancras was
made from 500 used compact disks.
Alfred Haberpointner is an Austrian sculptor,
born in 1966 in Ebenau, Austria. He studied
at the Technical School of Sculpture
in Hallein near Salzburg and at the the
University of Art in Linz. He now lives and
works in Leonding, near Linz in Austria.
Haberpointner uses wood as his primary
medium harnessing all its nuances and shades.
He is best known for his wooden plates that
he cuts, burns, saws, then bleaches and repigments.
He blows and breaks the surface
with a chainsaw and an axe, fixes the fibers of
the wood creating a texture, rhythm, intensity
and movement and suggesting a new
meaning to the raw material.
Haberpointner has widely exhibited, at
institutions such as the Museum Beelden
aan Zee, The Hague; Gallery Accademia,
Salzburg; Museum Würth, Germany; Art
and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic
of Germany; John F. Kennedy Center,
Washington, D.C.; Upper Austrian Provincial
Museum, Linz; OK Center for Contemporary
Art, Linz. His work can be found in the
collections of Museum Beelden aan Zee,
Netherlands; Museum Wurth, Germany;
Museum Liaunig, Germany; MUSA, Germany;
Lentos Linz, Austria; Museum der Moderne
Salzburg and the Upper Austrian Gallery.
Hallie Hart is an American artist based in New
York and Monaco. She holds an Masters of
Arts in English literature from the University
of Pennsylvania. Hart’s connection to painting
stems from her grandmother, a contemporary
impressionist painter who taught her Art
History and painting techniques at a young
age. An internship with abstract painter
Annaleis van Dommelen moved Hart to
become an artist. Further, the concept of
gestural Expressionism showed Hart a way to
channel the chaos of life into moments.
Hart works on the floor over her canvases
to have a wide-angle view of the painting,
and implements catwalks—some spanning
eight meters—to physically get over or into
the middle of her Action Painting process,
aligning with first-generation New York
School abstract expressionists such as
Jackson Pollock. She uses only her hands to
manipulate, flick, splatter, or throw paint.
Hart has received numerous awards
including the GemLucArt Award. Her
paintings have been exhibited widely,
including at Museo del Parco, Portofino, and
her work can be found in corporate and
private collections internationally.
George Morton-Clark is a British artist who
uses oil, acrylic, and charcoal on unprimed
canvas to bring familiar cartoon characters
to life. With a combination of bold images
and strong colours, his line drawings are
immersed in an abstract atmosphere of
energy and liveliness.
After studying animation for 3 years at
London University, he attended the Surrey
Institute of Art and Design. Once he
completed his Bachelor of Arts, he left to
pursue a career in art but animation remained
a strong influence in his craft. Morton-Clark
guides us into his energetic work with an
interesting combination of three elements:
intense colours, spontaneous drawings,
and nostalgic cartoon characters. They are
drawn in such a way that embodies both
the charm of a painting that is finished and
one that is still in progress. Even the chaotic,
exaggerated portions of his works are
expressed with such natural frankness that
they are transformed into positive elements
that inspire vitality and liveliness.
Morton-Clark’s work, which has been highly
praised by Dr. Rolf Lauter, former Chief
Curator and Deputy Director of the Museum
für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany, for
its humility and candour: “To appreciate his
work properly, one must take in the contents
splayed upon the entirety of the canvas,
instead of looking for a hidden meaning
behind them. Rather than presenting a
grand, elaborate theme about our time, and
trying to integrate himself into some section
of Art History, he presents pieces that
resemble comfortable and fun times spent
laughing and talking to close friends.”
Ellen von Unwerth is a German artist who
gained wide attention with her sensual
Guess campaign in the early 1990s, followed
by campaigns for the best high fashion,
cosmetic, jewellery and luxury brands.
She is a regular contributor to magazines all
over the world, like Cosmopolitan, Egoïste,
ELLE, Glamour, i-D, Interview, Lula, Numéro,
Paper Magazine, Playboy, Stern, The Face,
The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and many
international Vogue editions (American,
French, German, Italian, Russian).
Furthermore she directed short films for
clients like Azzedine Alaïa, Dior, Guess,
and Katherine Hamnett, and a range of
commercials and music videos.
Her book projects are an important part
of her career: her first book, Snaps, was
published in 1994, followed by Wicked
(1998), Couples (1999), the photo-novella
Revenge (2003), Omahyra & Boyd (2005),
Fräulein (2009), Die Spieler (2010), the
photo-novella The Story of Olga (2012), and
lately Heimat (2017).
Her works have been exhibited worldwide,
and are part of various collections. Ellen von
Unwerth won several prizes, amongst others
the first prize at the International Festival of
Fashion Photography in 1991, and the LUCIE
Award in 2012.
26 27

ORGANISATIONS
& CHARITIES
All proceedings of the exhibition will be
given to the following charities:
arcenciel is a
Lebanese based,
not-for-profit
organisation that
was established
in 1985 during the
Lebanese civil war.
It was recognised
as a public interest
NGO in 1995 by Presidential Decree N7541.
With five core programs, being implemented
at 12 centers across Lebanon, arcenciel’s
main goal is to work to the rehabilitiation of
every person in need.
arcenciel aims to vigorously advance
national policies in all the sectors in which it
is active, while keeping a non-confessional
and apolitical stance.
Adhering to the principles of sustainable
development, arcenciel emphasises
the social and economic integration of
marginalised people and communities back
into society. It believes that every person,
no matter the gravity of their handicap, is
capable of overcoming their disability and
contributing to the communities in which
they live. arcenciel supports the diversity of
society, and encourages the sustainability
and conservation of natural resources in all
aspects of its work.
Beb w’ shebbek
was founded by
close friends and
business associates
Mariana Wehbe
and Nancy Gabriel,
both of whom were
deeply affected
by the explosion.
Mariana’s office and Nancy’s home suffered
massive damage, and the pair tragically lost
friends and acquaintances in the blast. It is
remarkable that they and their families were
not physically harmed.
Mariana and Nancy decided they could not
sit back and just watch the humanitarian
disaster that was unfolding before their
very eyes. Besides the huge loss of life,
the explosion had a devastating impact on
the built-up areas surrounding the port,
extending far inland. In these residential
neighbourhoods, 300,000 people were
displaced in just minutes. The friends quickly
mobilised and set out on a mission to assist
those whose homes had been damaged.
The deadly blast at the port of Beirut has
caused damage exceeding 15 billion USD.
It has impacted all social classes across the
capital, especially Beirut’s middle-income
families — the lifeblood of the community.
Bebw’shebbek’s mission is to replace
the doors and windows of the destroyed
homes, bringing them back — as closely
as possible — to how they looked before
the explosion. With the help of over 200
architects, carpenters, contractors, glaziers
and painters, our objective is to get as many
people back into their homes as quickly
and safely as possible. Crucially, we act as
a lifeline for some of the most vulnerable
victims who would otherwise be unable to
afford the cost of repairing their own homes.
Caritas (the
Latin equivalent
word for charity)
was founded in
1897 in Freiburg,
Germany. In 1972,
the Jesuit Brother
Elie Maamari
founded Caritas
South Lebanon in cooperation with
this region bishops. It became Caritas
Lebanon on September 9th, 1976. In 1981,
the Assembly of Catholic Patriarchs and
Bishops of Lebanon approved Caritas
Lebanon’s status and designated it as the
official socio-pastoral arm of the Church
to assist both individuals and communities
and to support charitable and social
activities. Caritas Lebanon is a member of
Caritas Internationalis, one of the largest
humanitarian networks in the world,
counting 165 Catholic organisations working
in 200 different countries.
Caritas Lebanon, the common official sociopastoral
arm of the local Catholic Church
in service of the poor and the promotion
of love, charity and justice, provides
economic development, livelihoods, health
and social care, education, migration
services, emergency and crisis intervention,
human and humanitarian relief and aid,
environmental stewardship, as well as
advocacy and protection for all individuals
and groups of people in need.
Offrejoie w a s
born in the midst
of a raging civil
war in Lebanon
in 1985. A group
of young Red
Cross volunteers
worked together
to help the injured.
Alleviating human suffering transcended any
differences between them. They committed
to heal their torn country. They started
with children’s camps during the conflict.
Mothers entrusted their children to a trusted
member of their community. And those Red
Cross members brought children from their
community to a summer camp. The camp
honoured each members’ differences and
celebrated their common humanity. The
“Other” became a camp buddy.
Those camps have continued their healing
work since 1985, bringing together groups
of children from differing social classes and
backgrounds. And when those children grew
up they carried the values they had learned
at the camps and became a movement
of young citizens from all the different
communities and regions in Lebanon.
Over the years, Offrejoie developed
different approaches to tackle the
continuing challenges of Lebanon. At its
core are the consistent practice of the
values of love, respect, and forgiveness
and voluntary service. What began as a
group of enthusiastic volunteers in 1985 has
developed into a voluntary movement across
the country of Lebanon with a footprint in
France in 1986 and a sister group in Iraq
established in 2012 to share and promote its
vision and experience.
28 29

Published by Opera Gallery to coincide with the
exhibition For Beirut with Love, 29 October - 20
November 2020.
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