Ayman Baalbaki

Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner 

This work is in very good condition. There is faint wear to the upper left corner tip of the canvas and some minor wear above the centre of the frames left edge. All irregularities are inherent to the artist's creation process. The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, with the overall tonality being slightly softer and gentler in the original work.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Ayman Baalbaki was born in Lebanon in 1975; the year the Civil War began that eventually led to the displacement of his family. As eyewitness to numerous brutal, war-inflicted years spent in Beirut, many of the artist’s traumatic experiences have, unsurprisingly, provided the inspiration and subjects behind his most poignant artworks.

The present work arrests the viewer with the powerful sight of a disruptive aeroplane wreckage, recognised as ‘Middle Eastern Airline,' the national airline of Lebanon. Referencing Ayman Baalbaki’s recurrent theme of terrorism, focusing in particular on the Lebanese civil war, the present work alludes to the aircraft destroyed during an Israeli raid on Beirut’s airport in 1982.  Baalbaki’s unpredictable brushstroke technique and deconstructive method of presentation depicts the remnants subsequent to the point of collision. The artist captures the frenzied panic and chaotic atmosphere gripping the ill-fated passengers, illustrated amidst the vestiges of the aircraft; they swarm the canvas plane in an intense gestural mass. The Arabic inscription ‘The Middle East’ delivers a double meaning, referencing the traumatic accident as well as the universally disruptive current climate, a permanent fixture of the region.

For Baalbaki, “history is very much alive and not a thing of the past, and art is not only about complex intellectual exercise. History, the wilderness of war, loss, wandering and pride, are all manifests in his work. […] He defends art’s power to record and participate in life“( Rose Issa, Ayman Baalbaki: Beirut, Again and Again, 2011, p. 9).

Within the present work Baalbaki turns away from his previously archetypal portrayals of Beirut’s landmarks, keffiyeh personage, and skyline views of the city.  Instead he directs his focus to depict an emotively charged subject matter. Baalbaki forces the observer to relive the nightmarish events of the crash: a bitterly ironic result of the passenger’s desperate attempt to flee their war-torn homeland in anticipation of better prospects.