51 1/4 x 59 in
Fann À Porter is pleased to be participate at MENART Fair 2023 in Brussels, Belgium from with a collection of works from Syrian painters, Houssam Ballan and Omran Younes.
Figurative painter Houssam Ballan’s (Syria, b. 1983) canvases are informed by his accomplished technical abilities and through his extensive academic and research endeavour. In his latest collection of works, the artist takes a minimalist approach, using only a few elements and colour groups that have become the most prominent in his work as of late. At times, he utilizes the same element repeatedly, offering different perspectives on one shape by altering its size.
In the end, each form is a visual message speaking through the language of colour, space, and composition. The work, which is symbolic, also serves as a psychological depiction of the artist's life.
We do not know where the characters in these paintings live for that connection has been severed. Each piece is a poetic formula — intentionally rhetorical and brief.
Since the late 1990s, Syrian painter Omran Younis (b. 1971) has probed the psychological undercurrents of expressionist painting, building on a rich tradition of Syrian modernism that began when artists such as Fateh Moudarres used painting as a way of visualizing the unseen but palpable shifts in Syrian society in the mid twentieth century. Younis is steeped in this history yet remains committed to ongoing experimentation, actively pushing the boundaries of painting in search of ways to communicate the complexity of the human psyche and the physical responses that reveal its fragility, such as instances of fear and pain. This emphasis on the human condition makes works that were inspired by his surroundings in war-torn Syria categorically universal, resonating with viewers from the U.S. to the Middle East. His rich palette, characterized by shades of vermilion, sunburnt orange, lapis, and black, white, and grey, contrasts the warmth of the earth with the vastness of the sky, grounding his scenes in reality. In his most recent works, distinguished by thick, loose brushwork, prickly pear cacti stand in for the anonymous figures of earlier works, anthropomorphic representations of weathered yet resilient protagonists.
