RAFIK MAJZOUB
X RAY
10 October to 31 October 2012
Rafik Majzoub landed like a tornado on the Beirut art scene in the mid 1990s, creating images that reflected the intellectual and political climate of then. Since then, Majzoub’s work continues to question and peel back the social veneers of society and himself, none more so than in his new works, titled ‘X RAY’.
The raw images and deliberate artless style cut through any façade that may exist, showing the imperfection of life through these 11 direct and frontal portraits. Violent brushstrokes, a limited palette and neutral backgrounds are indicative of his style, and there is an immediacy in the work which reveals what is beneath the veneer.
Majzoub’s work is always direct and truthful, peering into the psyche of the human spirit from one minute to the next, attempting to show the hidden reality and truth of existence.
‘The Face….
Morning after morning looking at a blank page, trying to get a snap shot of the moment again and again, as if each day will be different. The face is the key to the inner you. I’ll use the blank space over and over as a mirror to me, to I and to you, the other. This is happening now.’
Rafik Majzoub
Rafik Majzoub was born in 1971 in Amman, Jordan, and he now works and resides in Beirut. Self taught, Majzoub is a painter and a graphic artist whose fame has largely gone beyond his city of adoption. His paintings are known to be raw, sarcastic and tense. His work is often focused on a person in perpetual quest of himself. His art often gives the impression of a work in progress, leaving it open, unfinished and unaccomplished, echoing the essential incapacity of the human being to accomplish in a world of imperfection, fracture and fragmentation.
Rafik worked as an illustrator for “Al Nahar Newspaper” until 1998. In the same year, the artist attained a three-month residency at “The Lagos Cultural Center” for getting UNESCO’s Artist Grant. Later in 2001, the artist won First Prize for “Post Cards of Lebanon”.
Rafik has held numerous solo exhibitions in Beirut and Amman, and participated in group shows in Cairo, Sydney, London and Lisbon.
