Galerie Claude Lemand

Biography.

Born in Baissour, Lebanon, in 1992, Ribal Molaeb moved to Austria at the age of 17, to study at the Mozarteum University Salzburg. He later moved to Vienna to study at the University for Music and Performing Arts, where he received his Master’s degree in Arts with dis­tinc­tion. Molaeb was assigned as the artistic director of “SUMITO’’ Art and Music Association in Switzerland. He is the pres­i­dent of the “Mo­laeb Art Museum” and the founder of “Mo­laeb Festival for Chamber Music and Fine Arts”.
His paint­ings have been exhib­ited in Amsterdam, Vienna, Zürich, Beirut and Paris.
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His Art

Ribal Molaeb was per­son­ally trained by his father, Jamil Molaeb, starting at a very young age. He is inspired by many Lebanese 20th cen­tury abstract expres­sion­ists, like Saliba Douaihy, Aref el Rayes and Shafic Abboud. After moving to Switzerland he was influ­enced by the works of Paul Klee, who was an accom­plished vio­linist him­self.
Ribal Molaeb’s musical edu­ca­tion in Vienna swayed his paint­ings. There is a musical ori­en­ta­tion in the com­po­si­tional, har­monic and melodic aspects of his works; He inter­ro­gates color power and har­mony cre­ating ener­getic paint­ings. His images have aspects of del­i­cate dis­tri­bu­tion of colors and shapes.

Molaeb’s under­standing of har­mony in clas­sical music con­tributed to his vision of abstract painting and com­po­si­tions. He paints in order to create a per­son­ally sat­is­fying world, cleanly designed, and del­i­cately har­mo­nized.
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Ribal Molaeb :
I grew up among colors and paint­ings; always fas­ci­nated by the idea of living with an artist, my father, Jamil Molaeb. Very often, I skipped school days to stay with him in his work­shop. At age six, I started studying clas­sical music and trained as a vio­list.

At age sev­en­teen, I moved to Salzburg, Austria to study at Mozarteum University, and then moved to Vienna to study at the University of Music and the Arts: Eight years of study before set­tling in Zürich, Switzerland.

I came back to painting like one goes back to their par­ents’ house in the vil­lage, as if to restore one’s roots. Our ances­tors did not feel rest until they dug their hands in the soil, planted the ground and enjoyed pro­duc­tion. I find this rest when I fill my hands in oil paint and pro­duce a painting.

I trav­elled the world with music: to China, America and Europe. But it was only through painting that I could travel back to my roots.

I learned how to paint while thinking as a musi­cian. My paint­ings are based on har­mony. Just like in music, each work has a har­monic, melodic and rhyth­mical struc­ture. I think of the rela­tion between colors like I think of into­na­tion in music.
Mountains. Water. Space. A warm child­like world. Clear, lumi­nous fields. Mysterious meta­phys­ical poems. I leave it to the viewer to feel what my work res­onates with.
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Agenda cul­turel, Beirut, Lebanon. An exhi­bi­tion of paint­ings made between 2017 and 2020 in Austria, Switzerland and Lebanon.

Molaeb’s under­standing of har­mony in clas­sical music con­tributed to his vision of abstract painting and com­po­si­tions. He paints in order to create a per­son­ally sat­is­fying world, cleanly designed, and del­i­cately har­mo­nized.

Ribal Molaeb : "I grew up among colors and paint­ings; always fas­ci­nated by the idea of living with an artist, my father, Jamil Molaeb. Very often, I skipped school days to stay with him in his work­shop.
At age six, I started studying clas­sical music and trained as a vio­list.
At age sev­en­teen, I moved to Salzburg, Austria to study at Mozarteum University, and then moved to Vienna to study at the University of Music and the Arts: Eight years of study before set­tling in Zürich, Switzerland.
I came back to painting like one goes back to their par­ents’ house in the vil­lage, as if to restore one’s roots. Our ances­tors did not feel rest until they dug their hands in the soil, planted the ground and enjoyed pro­duc­tion. I find this rest when I fill my hands in oil paint and pro­duce a painting.
I trav­elled the world with music: to China, America and Europe. But it was only through painting that I could travel back to my roots.

I learned how to paint while thinking as a musi­cian. My paint­ings are based on har­mony. Just like in music, each work has a har­monic, melodic and rhyth­mical struc­ture. I think of the rela­tion between colors like I think of into­na­tion in music.
Mountains. Water. Space. A warm child­like world. Clear, lumi­nous fields. Mysterious meta­phys­ical poems. I leave it to the viewer to feel what my work res­onates with."

As a renowned and award-win­ning musi­cian, do you find your art and music always com­ple­ment each other or are they ever in con­flict? Can you explain how the two interact and the dynamism between them?
 I would put it this way: painting is my mother lan­guage and music is my for­eign lan­guage. But this does not mean that my for­eign lan­guage is weaker; I mean this only in the sense of my ini­tial approach to those two prac­tices of art. Painting is some­thing I’ve done since I was a child, while clas­sical music is some­thing I had to travel to learn. I left Lebanon for Salzburg aged 17 to study music, but I have always prac­tised both arts in par­allel. However, I waited until my paint­ings reached a cer­tain level before revealing them pub­licly.

Whether it is in painting or in music, my moti­va­tion is the act of cre­ation! Playing clas­sical music is an act of ‘inter­pre­ta­tion’. I have a daily urge to ‘create’, which is why I make sure to paint every day. I’ve also learned a great deal about how to paint while thinking as a musi­cian. My art and music undoubt­edly com­ple­ment each other. I build my paint­ings like any musical com­po­si­tion on the basis of har­mony, move­ment, rhythm, dynamics, accents and even cer­tain ‘into­na­tion’ between the colours. I use my under­standing of clas­sical music theory and com­po­si­tions in order to pro­duce my paint­ings.

You were per­son­ally taught by your father. How do you think your tuition varied from what you might have learned at an art insti­tu­tion? Do you think his status made it more dif­fi­cult for you to find your own style and indi­vid­u­ality as an artist?
 I spent my child­hood working with my father in his studio and learned by watching, as well as by being his assis­tant in his work­shop. I some­times even skipped school to work with him! It was an intense daily artistic lifestyle for a child which I wouldn’t get at an academy. My father use to tell me that if I’d studied at a tra­di­tional art academy, I wouldn’t be able to paint in the way I paint now. Spending my last 10 years between Austria, Germany and Switzerland has enabled me to reg­u­larly visit modern art museums which in my case con­tributed to my visual art tuition. His status did not make it more dif­fi­cult to find my own style - I simply see myself as a con­tin­u­a­tion. And this is hap­pening nat­u­rally.

You have cited key Lebanese 20th cen­tury abstract expres­sion­ists as sources of inspi­ra­tion and more recently, Paul Klee. Can you see ele­ments of Klee in your­self, given that he was also an accom­plished string player?
 I learned a great deal by looking at the paint­ings of Lebanese 20th cen­tury artists. We have a large col­lec­tion of their works at home - Aref el Rayess, Shafic Abboud, Paul Guiragossian and Saliba Douaihy to men­tion few - and we were always dis­cussing them. While living in Switzerland and learning more about Paul Klee, I dis­cov­ered that there are many sim­i­lar­i­ties between us, both being musi­cians, string players and painters. In the same way I like to approach my paint­ings, there is a musical ori­en­ta­tion in the com­po­si­tional, rhythmic and melodic aspects of many of Paul Klee’s paint­ings and for a long time, he was unde­cided whether to become a painter or a musi­cian. We do have a sim­ilar under­standing of colour dis­tri­bu­tion and orches­tra­tion, and this is sup­ported by knowl­edge gained in clas­sical music studies.

Lebanon fea­tures in your art. Why do you think you find your­self drawn to your birth­place in your paint­ings, despite living and working abroad?
 Each painter paints the cos­mogony of him­self. Our sub­con­scious is full of images from our child­hood and maybe some­times from our past lives. Despite leaving Lebanon aged 17, when I dream at night, the dreams are always coming from my child­hood home. I don’t wait for inspi­ra­tion and I don’t need exte­rior ele­ments to inspire me; I can easily paint the Mediterranean Sea while working in my studio in Zürich. This is because the brain has a vast amount of data. I pro­gress my data, in colours and forms, on a canvas.

Both the visual and the per­forming arts have been severely affected by Covid. How have you accom­mo­dated the pan­demic to remain active in your work and has it affected your art in terms of cre­ativity/pro­duc­tion?

Nature forced us to slow down and to dive deeper into our­selves. The pan­demic gave me the space and time to think and work even more and without having to travel and tour for con­certs. I realised even more clearly how fragile we humans are, how short life can be. What will I be remem­bered for?! When things are col­lapsing around you, the infinite space of the imag­i­na­tion can offer solace. I took refuge in painting. I spent my whole year in my studio in Zürich. I painted every day without any excep­tion.
What art are you working on now?

I am pro­gressing over this period what I have recently painted and dis­tributing my paint­ings between four exhi­bi­tions taking place cur­rently and soon this year in Beirut, Zürich, Paris and London.