“Sunset Language” exhibition tells the story of sun whispering her secrets before disappearing at sunset, passing between the bodies of her loved ones and changing their language from an auditory language to a visual language full of warmth and silence.” The Lebanese Artist, Chucralla Fattouh documents this moment as he called it the new language of the sun that is expressed in a series of drawings.
The artist Chucralla Fattouh has a wide artistic experience, as he graduated from the College of Fine Arts of the Lebanese University in Beirut in 1983. since then he has dedicated himself to art. from 1985 to date, the artist has conducted more than 150 group and solo exhibitions in art galleries and festivals in Lebanon and abroad, like Elkan, Virginia, Tunisia, and Brazil. The artist also exhibited in Bait Muzna gallery in Muscat 2015.
He participated in many national and international exhibitions and auctions, such as the Bonhams Art Auction House and recently at Sotheby’s. He received many awards, most notably the Queen Elizabeth II award in 2007, in his participation in the live painting of the charitable horse race in the annual Gulf Polo Cup in London.
The artist belongs to the Lebanese coastal village of Monsef. In the early sixties, and since his childhood, he used to observe the waves, the sky, and the clouds that he grew up remembering all time. Inspired by the beauty of his fair coastal city, he painted those scenes and colors full of life. The artist was able to create an artistic imprint that focuses on symbolism of the characters, and the minimization of flat geometric shapes in the spaces that surround the subject.
As for the current exhibition at Sarah Gallery, the artist Chucralla Fattouh presents his recently produced works from the Sunset Language series, which was the main inspiration for this collection in the coastal village of Monsef. This collection takes us on a journey to the artist’s world of bright vocabulary and formations, where his works explain “the inner self or an essential personal vision of the sunset and its impact on the world”, he says.
In addition, the artist presents his series “Living with a foreign body”, where the whole world lives with foreign bodies daily. “At first, they become afraid, and then gradually they begin to adapt to the foreign bodies around them, so they become part of their world”, he expresses. Here, the artist captures the image or the first impression of this encounter, which carries many ambiguities, raises the question of the viewer, and the artist does not tell the story, but leaves it to the viewer to imagine and explain.
The artist Fattouh inspired his sons to be artists themselves. His son shares with him a short film of his production and artworks in the current exhibition. Artist Nicholas is a visual artist and film director, graduated from the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts with a master’s degree in Animation. He participated in more than 30 exhibitions and auctions locally and internationally including Bonham (London) and sold 6 paintings in 2016. In 2018, his debut film “How My Grandmother Became on a Chair” was awarded the Robert Bosch Stiftung Film Award as a German-Lebanese co-production during the Berlinale. Today, this award-winning short film has been selected in more than 80 prestigious festivals around the world (10 Oscar-qualifying festivals) and has won 21 awards including the Sundance TV and Carthage Awards.
It is worth noting that “The Language of Sunset” lasts until December 11, 2021 – from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm – from Saturday to Thursday at Sarah Gallery in Bait Al Zubair Museum.
