For Beirut With Love

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focus on outdated media.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.
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