1 February - 12 March 2022

HALA MOUZANNAR

Hala Mouzannar gives prominence in her work to the materiality, and vicissitudes, of the flesh. She dwells on the material surface of her canvases, creating tears, crusts, and chutes from the manipulation of a mélange of stone powder, silicon, latex, gauze, and oils. Her series of works are grouped according to technique: dechirure, petit couteau, grand couteau, chute, plaie, and peau. The formation of differently textured surfaces, in a range of exuberant and at times corporeal colours, invokes in the viewer visceral bodily sensations of both (interested) pleasure and perturbation.

“For things as for souls, the mystery is inside. A revery of intimacy-of an intimacy which is always human-opens up for the man who enters into the mysteries of matter.”

Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Reverie

“The matter and material I create is at times rough, dusty or sandy, and at other times tormented and even torn. It is at the same time icy, sometimes even transparent and even fragile. This research into materials and textures expresses sensations that we feel when we suffer in our bodies

As part of a generation that witnessed a panorama of violence in its youth, I interrogate trauma and pain not only as objects but as dynamics of power. In my work, skin has very rapidly imposed itself as a manipulable object capable of exploring this problematic. Skin becomes a metaphoric battlefield of the psyche, or of the process of injury, healing, and necrosis that itself echoes psychological dynamis.

The execution of my work is particular in that it extends over several weeks. I work many canvases at the same time and horizontally. As days go by, layers of paint, latex, varnish, and oils are superimposed on the canvases. I then manipulate them, zone after zone, creating heteroclite islets of textures inspired by the reaction of organic tissue to trauma. As the layers I apply progressively dry, I interact with the painted material as if I were touching skin- or shaping it. I create wrinkles and tears and I exaggerate a bit the effect of gravity that our bodies undergo with the wear of time. The canvases patiently await the pain to metamorphose in them.

Ultimately, my aim is to spark a conversation between the (pain)ting and the viewer: pain is sometimes triumphant (overflowing and invading space) and sometimes controlled (discreet and even adulatory). I want to show the ambivalence and the different nuances of our relationship to our pains- when they dominate us, or inversely, when we master them. My paintings rest doubly on the passing of time: the time I spend working on each work and the time our bodies- and above all our souls- need to mend their wounds.”

Hala Mouzannar, 2021