Chaouki CHOUKINI, To Beirut, 2020.
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Number 3/7. Exhibited on Booth D21. Galerie Claude Lemand - ART PARIS 2025.
Number 1/7. Donation Claude & France Lemand. Museum of the Institut du monde arabe, Paris.
Number 2/7. Donation Claude & France Lemand. The Sursock Museum, Beirut, Lebanon.
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Thierry Savatier, Art historian.
At the heart of the work of the sculptor Chaouki Choukini, Li Bayrut (2020) is part of a singularity born of a tragic event, the explosion which devastated Beirut on August 4, 2020. If the sculptures of the artist generally strike by their verticality, that of To Beirut, however, is not to be confused with the momentum towards infinity with which Le Corbusier or Louis-Ferdinand Céline were surprised when discovering the skyscrapers of New York from the ocean. Here, the formal organization seems to deeply anchor the opus in the ancestral land, while giving to see, by the games of matter, the shapes, the solids, the recesses, the notches and the skilfully arranged reliefs, the image of the chaos. It is not the least of the paradoxes to suggest solidity in collapse. The sober aesthetic of the whole leads to this to a large extent.
The original sculpture was executed, following the habit of Chaouki Choukini, in direct carving in wood. A less polished wood than usual, however, the artist having worked on material effects that could be likened to stigmata, when he does not show strata of exposed bricks. The bronze version retains them, but the chosen patina offers an even more implacable work, since, under the brown layer, emerges, with measured discretion, a red layer which is reminiscent of the blood shed by thousands of Lebanese.
The viewer wonders, because this monolithic construction does not seem unrelated to the now emblematic grain silo in the port of Beirut, which, although located near the epicenter of the explosion, still erects some sections of walls like a time challenge. We know that the building is creating a lively debate even within the State, between those who would like to destroy this embarrassing testimony of their carelessness and those who, with the families of the victims, would like to preserve it in the name of the collective memory. Whatever the fate of these ruins, the memorial character of Li Bayrut will remain, both as a tribute steeped in humanity and an abstract symbol of spirituality.
Chaouki Choukini’s sculptures bear witness to his singular aesthetic. Abstract, they nevertheless include some mineral or biological details, even anthropomorphic or that can be interpreted as such (Liberté fauve I). His strange formal constructions sometimes seem to defy the laws of balance; they present unexpected recesses or projections that plunge the viewer into an imaginary that is both dreamlike and all the more disturbing as the softness of the impeccably polished surfaces contrasts with the sometimes dark character of the whole (Paysage au clair de lune, 1978; Lieu, 1978). When we know that the artist works with wood or stone in direct carving, we measure his dexterity in playing with material / light oppositions to make the most of them.
Spirituality and metaphysics mark the plasticity of his works, just as humanity permeates them (Little Prince. Child of Gaza, 2010). However, the artist does not refrain from paying homage to the art of his predecessors, sometimes with a certain surrealist humor (Hommage à Breughel, 2001) or an attraction for tragic allegory, like this very totemic (Cheval de Guernica, wood, 2010; bronze, 2011) of which Picasso, no more than of the bull, did not reveal the secret symbolism, leaving the viewer his free interpretation. The figures of Chaouki Choukini, whether they recall landscapes or even satellite views (Les Environs de Damas, 2012) in their horizontality or that they challenge the sky in their verticality (Li Bayrut, 2020), are striking with their minimalist aesthetic, undoubtedly inherited from his Japanese experience which came to supplement his Eastern and Western sensibilities.
