ABOUT THE ARTIST

Born in Lebanon in 1970, Hussein Hussein’s artistic journey is a testament to his diverse nature. He received his Master’s degree in Pharmacy in 1998 from the Academy of Saint Petersburg in Russia, however his passion for the visual arts led him to complete a graduate degree in Fine Arts in 2007 at the Lebanese University where he currently teaches. In 2017 Hussein earned a PhD in Art and Art Sciences at the Lebanese University. In 2018, he released his first book “Les Arts Incohérents 1882-1893: La Page manquante de l’histoire de l’Art Rebelle”. Hussein has to his record 6 solo exhibitions and has participated in more than 45 collective exhibitions in Lebanon and abroad.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Far from being lost from reality and experience, “DIS-JUNCTION” art exhibition penetrates the Lebanese daily life and the inevitable crisis that extends from 2019 to this very day. The previous exhibition “Un/An Ordinary Lebanese landscape” held in June 2019 announced a crisis present in our daily lives and denounced the “sloppiness” of the Lebanese who no longer saw themselves adapting to the unadaptable. Through the power of denial and the subconscious, we no longer feel irritated by signs that hide within them a predisposition to accept the unacceptable. 

The 2019 series invited us to be aware that all these electric poles illuminated in broad daylight, these garbage cans scattered in the streets, these flags encircling nature and many other elements ended up being associated with our perception of daily life, by a kind of long-term manipulative hypnosis. “DIS-JUNCTION” reflects the total submission to the crisis that had been brewing for a long time and that the works of the previous exhibition were trying, albeit late, to draw our attention to. DIS-JUNCTION is the action of disunity or abnormal separation between two usually united elements. 

The interpretation of this state of psychological disagreement is not engulfed in political insinuations, but rather reflects the state of mind of the “submitted” to this interminable crisis triggered in 2019. The artworks holds a strong symbolic character as well as a conceptual approach which invites the reader to de-codify the works whose meaning is hidden behind metaphors and insinuations which will not take long to reveal themselves. 

Needless to say, hope holds an important place in Hussein’s work. The artist’s palette can attest to that. Bright and blatant colors dominate the canvas as if to compensate for the bitterness of the crisis. Poles, plates, tables, circuit breakers and electrical wires all intertwine around panels in order to compensate for power cuts. Cisterns, pipes as well as water pumps worn by erosion and rust. Semi-abstractions of human figures standing or painfully carrying gas cylinders and other objects. All this, frozen in a metaphysical atmosphere that slows down time, where these everyday objects become totems in the face of the inaccessibility, they inflict on us.

Are we merely talking about electricity? Is this exhibition about pipes or water pumps? Is the artist through his artworks trying to depict our sad reality post crisis? One thing is certain, neither these colored electric wires, nor these poles, nor these circuit breakers speak for themselves. We therefore invite the audience today to contemplate those works allowing themselves to be mesmerized by this colorful journey in order for their emotions to unfold and let the works resonate within them. Take a moment to reflect on those paintings by allowing your vision to transcend the shapes and colors on the canvas in order to reach a new realm.