Agial Art Gallery would like to invite you to the opening of:
SHAWKI YOUSSEF
9 Mornings & 13 Good Nights
Shawki Youssef’s paintings are about processes of thoughts and inquiries into what matters. Matter is a physical substance, which is allegedly distinct from the mind, the spirit, and energy. Youssef’s habitual and almost obsessive subject, the human body, dissolves or vanishes, and is replaced by tables/beds. Tables, beds, and human bodies blend in the emerging space they occupy to assert that they are made up of the same matter. Delicate lines, shades, and transparencies of color interact with the white and textured surface of the canvas, giving ethereal form to things—tables, human figures, walls, etc.— that transmit, like when touching, this “uncanny sense of the other,” of oneself, and “the transience of matter’s existence.”
Shawki Youssef was born in Beirut in 1973. He received his bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from the Lebanese University in 1994 before going on to complete a Master’s in science in 2007 at Saint Joseph University in Lebanon. Youssef’s work extends across multiple mediums to include painting, drawing, video, and installations. Recent solo and group exhibitions include “My Last Century Remains”, Al Markhiya Gallery, Doha (2014); “Acid Fields”, Green Art Gallery, Dubai (2013); “Le Corps Decouvert”, the Institut Du Monde Arabe, Paris (2012); “Rebirth: Lebanon 21st Century Contemporary Art”, Beirut Exhibition Center, Beirut (2011); “Hollow Flesh,” Agial Art Gallery (2011); and “Fluid Being”, Green Art Gallery (2011). His work can be found in the Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah, and in the Salsali Private Museum, Dubai. He lives and works in Beirut, Lebanon.
Opening: Thursday 5 September 2019 at 6:00 pm (till 28 September 2019)
Venue: Agial Art Gallery, 63 Abdel Aziz St., Hamra, Beirut, Lebanon.
About Agial
Agial Art Gallery, established in Beirut in 1990, is one of the leading destinations for modern & contemporary art from Lebanon and the Arab world.