Fadi Elchamaa

FUQA’A

Bubble

November 10 - December 1, 2022

 

“Shiny shimmery iridescent wobbly spheres.
An unbearable lightness.
Fleeting existence.
Life in a state of play.

I am fascinated by bubbles and their unbearable lightness, their transparency, wobbly shapes, and fleeting existence...

Like feelings, illusions, beliefs, dreams and ideas, bubbles attract each other to merge, fuse, and eventually disappear... Life in a state of play.”

Fadi Elchamaa

 

About the artist

Born in 1960 in Beirut, and currently based in Baabdat, Lebanon, Fadi Elchamaa has intermittently traveled and lived in 8 different Arab creative cultures: Beirut, Damascus, Al Khobar, Manama, Cairo, Riyadh, Casablanca, and Doha, which had a great influence on the development of his visual language and search for authenticity.

A self-taught artist, Elchamaa worked with photography and darkroom techniques between 1974 and 1981, before moving to painting in 1982. He has “survived three wars, of which one is civil, a pandemic, and the total dissolution of his country as he knows it”.

Starting 1995, Elchamaa has shown his work at different venues in Lebanon, like Yarzeh Art Gallery, Forum Art Show, Sursock Museum’s Salon d’Automne (1995 and 1996), Galerie Rochane (1997 and 2016), and a solo show titled “Transformations” at Joanna Seikaly Art Gallery in 2011. He has also shown at KAF Contemporary Art Gallery (2018, 2019), the Gebran Tueni Foundation (2019), and held a solo exhibition titled “And Tomorrow, Who Am I?” at Artlab, Beirut, also in 2019.

Since 2012, he has gone on to exhibit with more venues abroad such as: Galerie 59 Rivoli, Paris (2012 and 2016), “Deviations” solo show at Galleria Soul, Egypt (2016), Eve Leibe Gallery, London (2019), Galerie de BeiBei & KU CLUB, Beijing (2020), Open Gallery, Berlin, 389 La Boutique, Paris, FLTRD, and Dune ArtStation, Dubai, all in 2022.

His first solo exhibition with Galerie Janine Rubeiz “FUQA’A (Bubble)” takes place between November 10 and December 1, 2022.