Exhibition | The distance between your eyes and the Sun by Charbel-joseph H. Boutros

Opening on Thursday, October 17, 2019, 6:00pm

Exhibition dates: October 17, 2019 to January 18, 2020

The distance between your eyes and the Sun is conceived as an abstract garden composed of two plots and an unexpected passway. The exhibition here is treated as a material in itself that Charbel-joseph H. Boutros uses to elaborate some of his artworks. He infiltrates the exhibition’s usual structure, transforming it into an all-encompassing organic body, whose limbs, or elements, are active and participate in fabricating art. Atypical relationships are established between artworks, artist, institution, staff, and visitors; they follow new patterns and constitute altogether an ever-evolving and complex exhibition scheme. A myriad of surreal situations result from the provoked interferences and are invited to coexist in a delicate manner, forming seemingly scenarios narrated and orchestrated by H. Boutros.

Catwalk (2019), an immaculate elevated pathway, is dedicated solely to the institution’s team, separating their flux from the rest of the visitors, and creates an uncanny spectacle among the institution’s usual crowd. Geography and Abstraction (2019) translates the Beirut Art Center founders’ weight into equivalent concrete cylinders, placed under the first carpet in the exhibition. Their bodies mutate into an organic abstract sculpture , creating a conceptual plinth for the exhibition and a new geography that visitors are invited to walk through. The Exhibition Between Us (2019) singles out two visitors, the first and the last to witness the show. Each of the visitors’ names are carved on awaiting marble slabs, marking the exhibition’s starting and closing dates—an exhibition unfurling between two memorial stones and between two persons.

Finally, a small blown glass sphere encloses a tear from the artist’s gallerist’s left eye, mixed with water from the Atlantic Ocean. The sphere is shown close to the model of the unrealized architectural project where that work should ideally be shown. An unrealized ideal museum exposed inside the newly renovated Beirut Art Center—an artwork endlessly waiting for its dreamt museum to exist.

An artwork that is shown close to the model of the unrealized project where ideally that work should be shown was commissioned for Home Works 8

Charbel-joseph H. Boutros (b. 1981, Lebanon) lives and works between Beirut and Paris. In his work, invisibility is charged with intimate, geographical, and historical layers, finding poetic lines that extend beyond the realm of existing speculations and realities. H. Boutros was a resident at the Pavillon, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, and a researcher at the Jan van Eyck Academie, the Netherlands. His work has been shown internationally at the 12th Istanbul Biennial; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; S.M.A.K., Gent; Punta Della Dogana, Venice; Centre Pompidou, Metz; CCS Bard College, New York; the 3rd Bahia Biennial, Brasi; the 1st Yinchuan Biennial, China; MAM-BA Museum of Modern Art, Salvador, Brasil; and Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah. He is represented by Grey Noise, Dubai and Galeria Jaqueline Martins, São Paulo.

This event is part of Home Works 8: A Forum on Cultural Practices.

Courtesy of the artist; Grey Noise, Dubai; and Galeria Jaqueline Martins, São Paulo