Celebrating the tenth edition of JABAL, Le Gray hosted the
works of a group of emerging artists from at home and abroad, including 17
painters, seven photographers, seven sculptors, and even one embroiderer. Dotted
amongst the sprawl were some promising talents, particularly Yasmina Nysten,
whose sophisticated oil-on-canvas work was deftly technical and resolutely
modern. Expertly evinced human anatomy was the site of melancholia, with the
red-hued faces of ‘For a City of the Future’ wrapped in cold, contrasting
shadows of cerulean blue.
The human form also was the focal point for Diana
Halabi, whose stooped, shrouded men in ‘The Trust Issue’ and ‘Ignorance’ were
cited as visual metaphors for human behaviour – pallid of face, hunched of back
and swathed in fabric, the figures were what Halabi bleakly referred to as ‘the
real you’.
Across a different medium, interior architect-turned-illustrator Jad
El Khoury got smiles a-twitching with a series of cheeky, Keith Haring-esque
illustrated prints entitled ‘Potato Nose’, referring to the squat, bug-eyed
little protagonist who appears across all of them. Potato Nose comprises some
of El Khoury’s first exhibited work, and Selections have him, and his squashy
little hero, as one(s) to watch during the coming months.
