Physis and the Allegory of the Cave

A spectacular hyperactive volcano, ceaselessly, bursting into flame, that is Charles Khoury. Captivating, his colorful lava, and ghostly shapes sway the awareness, mesmerize the soul and dazzle the senses.

Stratum after stratum, his chromatic palette deconstructs the haven of the formal canvas to reconstruct new idioms in the aspatial and atemporal realm. His action is a perpetual rebirth of an informal cosmogony of spaces and shapes; a reincarnating the platonic physis. Every painting attempt is a rinascimento of a modern macrocosm and a metempsychosis of a new order. Alas! There is no rest on the seventh day, Homeros.

Charles native jargon is founded on a culture of communication and expression. His entities, carefully thought out, well calculated and meticulously executed, dwell together and feed on one another within the spatial jute. Moreover, like butterflies freely crossing the borders, these entities travel from jute to jute advocating the harmony’s lucidos ordo and reflecting the ascent of “beauty itself by itself with itself.”

Charles Khoury endeavors to reconcile the human with the animal in his artistic kingdom. Committed to the pictorial rituals, the artist rejuvenates the primal mystery of aesthetic. His creative labor invokes the zoomorphic beings of Ancient Egypt, guards the secret of Australian Aboriginal wall paintings and revives Hieronymus Bosch insanity.

His art is a contemporary reinterpretation of the “Allegory of the Cave” where all objects are not real but mimic the reality. Subdue by the shadows of the imaginary stereotypes, the skeptical mind interrogates its erudition. Subsequently, as “Man gave names to all the animals”, Man automates names to Charles archetypes creatures.

Behold the individual, singular, distinct, and idiosyncratic, self-taught, unorthodox and rebel artist who signs his paintings and polychromatic wooden sculptures: <harles.

- Gaby Maamary