Galerie Claude Lemand

ANAS ALBRAEHE, Bâb Alhawa - Gate of the Wind - Gate of Exile.

 Solo exhi­bi­tion ded­i­cated to eight large paint­ings by the young Syrian Artist (born in 1991), who lives in Beirut and Paris.
 Date : from November 21, 2022 to January 11, 2023.
 Address : Galerie Claude Lemand , 70 avenue Jean Moulin , 75014 Paris.
 Visits : everyday, only by appoint­ment.
 Tel. +336 7377 0589 . Email : cle­mand@o­r­ange.fr
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By Thierry Savatier.

His most recent paint­ings, from the “Bab Alhawa - Gate of the Wind ” series - name of the border post that sep­a­rates Syria from Turkey -, are also devoted to refugees, but this time cap­tured on their journey to exile. The artist is inter­ested here in women, ado­les­cents and chil­dren seated or, most often, asleep in the dump­sters of trucks that trans­port them ran­domly from con­flicts to qui­eter areas. He chooses to paint them in this delim­ited space, lying in the middle of volu­mi­nous bundles cut in fab­rics of bright colors, formerly quite fre­quent in the Levantine coun­tryside. The spec­tator under­stands that these packets not only con­sti­tute their viaticum but that they ulti­mately con­tain the only per­sonal prop­erty that they have been able to save. A whole life reduced to a bag...

Of course, we can rightly estab­lish a link between their sleep and fatigue, or even the ful­fill­ment of a nat­ural bio­log­ical rhythm. However, Anas Albraehe main­tains an inter­esting aes­thetic paradox between the dark per­sonal sit­u­a­tion of these refugees and the shim­mering chro­matic envi­ron­ment that sur­rounds them, where the most ardent reds and yel­lows dom­i­nate. The main­tained con­trast sug­gests to the viewer an inter­pre­ta­tion that takes him beyond appear­ances. Because sleep is not lim­ited to its restora­tive func­tion; it is also the priv­i­leged medium of dreams. What are these tossed char­ac­ters thinking about? Perhaps they are responding to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s famous invi­ta­tion: "Make your life a dream, and a dream a reality"? Oneirism within oneirism… Perhaps they could say, like Léon-Paul Fargue: “I dreamed so much that I am no longer from here”? Perhaps they are simply thinking of the hap­pi­ness of returning home and resuming their lives, prior to the chaos that threw them on the roads. No one can tell. However, one cer­tainty is essen­tial, which spares a part of hope: as one can guess, fate deprived them of their pos­ses­sions, took them away from their land of origin, sep­a­rated them from their fam­i­lies; how­ever, he will remain pow­er­less to cut them off from their dreams.