" All
the paintings are square," says Srouji, now
cocking his head to the other side. " Here they
are arranged in diptychs or triptychs." The
exact pairings could change, however, as could
the orientation of each individual work. As
Srouji suggests, putting the Mona Lisa upside
down may be just the Mona Lisa upside down, but
putting one of his own paintings upside down
could very well open up new possibilities, even
new meanings, for the work. It' s the kind of
creative act Srouji encourages.
" I' m trying to include the spectator in the
process," he explains. " Art is a process of
self-liberation, of liberation from tangible
things or ideas. The cubists sought the
liberation of form. The impressionists sought
the liberation of color."
Describing his work as abstract, lyrical and
figurative at once, Srouji says he is after "
the true meaning of abstraction, so you can take
out of it what you need and reduce it to its
essence."
Born in 1957, Srouji began drawing when he
was a teenager. " I was always interested in
what color could do," he recalls, " just a
little bit more than a normal kid."
As he grew older, he studied science, then
literature, then art. " It took me five years to
finish my BA," he says with a shrug and a smile.
Srouji was 18 when the Civil War in Lebanon
broke out. He worked briefly with the Red Cross.
But when his house got wrecked, he left Beirut
for Montreal. After finishing his masters -
writing his thesis on the role of the object in
art from Marcel Duchamp to the appropriation art
of the 1980s - he left Montreal for Paris.
" What I' m doing in my work," says Srouji, "
is just talking about myself as a nomad. My
roots are here in Lebanon but I' ve been
floating for 30 years."
When asked what keeps him from returning to
Lebanon permanently, given he' s had at least
four successful exhibitions here since the late
1990s, he says: " I don' t have the capital to
say, ' Okay, I' m going to stay, because I work,
I teach, my wife is French, my son is French.
But if the situation here became clearer, it
would encourage people to return."
There is definitely an ephemeral, whimsical
touch to Srouji' s latest paintings, done in
acrylic on raw, unprimed canvas, using varying
amounts of water to give some colors a viscous,
translucent appearance.
" It looks like it takes me one day to make a
painting," he says. " But it takes me six
months. You might think it is created in a
violent way but actually in happens quite
slowly. The impact [for the viewer] is direct,
but it' s an accumulation over time."
Srouji' s show is dominated by a series of
thick vertical lines, which represent the bars
of a cage, as emblems of confinement, but also
function like the bars of a musical composition,
serving to pace and provide rhythm for the work.
" I compose songs," says Srouji with another
smile, as he pulls out a small notebook to flip
open a page full of notes that he penned for his
son. " Painting for me is visual music. For me,
when I hear music, I see colors."
Another element that stands out in Srouji' s
show is his tendency to burn holes through his
canvases, sometimes exposing a second skin of
canvas beneath, sometimes exposing nothing but a
wood support or the wall.
" For me, burning the canvas is a kind of
drawing," he explains. " I could use burnt
charcoal but it wouldn' t be the same. It' s
about the consumption of the support itself. It
is a motif of war, yes, but it has become a
decorative motif, a musical motif. Now we can
take this motif and play with it. The war is far
behind. I was 18 when the conflict started. I
lived through it and beyond it."
Like everything else in his art, Srouji is
willing to turn history on its head to see how
it looks upside down.
Hanibal Srouji' s " Touches" is on view at
Galerie Janine Rubeiz through April 26. For more
information, please call +961 1 868 290
