What quiet places, full of possibility 

It has softness, the coal, not the silky softness of a child (we will return to the child) but dense, wild, and somehow mute, a softness that refuses speech, sound.

Baalbaki’s coal structures are familiar if ambiguous. Neo-classical architecture melds with places of worship, old forms that creak and tug, slipping between the civic, philanthropic, religious. But it is the material that takes over, seizes the mind and pulls us into form, The joy of the attempt, the human in the world. 

 This work began in innocent instinct, the coal seen as children’s blocks for building. Through play Baalbaki works his way deep into soft blackness and out into the adult world. From there, he renders what are perhaps the most adult of edifices, temple, church, mosque, museum, bank.

It’s a work of faith, a reach for connection felt more than explained. In the softness of coal, its healing, velvet coat, and in our knowledge of its properties, its scarcity, its increasingly golden allegory, there is a contemplative moment, a reflection on what it is that drives us, what we really need.

*In parallel to this opening, Barbara Polla will be signing her recent book on Abdul Rahman Katanani translated into Arabic. Tarek Elkassouf will be also launching his new monograph “The Future is Near” in the main gallery, an occasion for those who missed his exhibition to see it (last day 12 August).