Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery is thrilled to represent the works of French-Syrian artist Ziad Dalloul (b.1953) in Asia on an exclusive basis, featuring his debut solo exhibition Shimmer of Memory in Hong Kong in May.
As one of the Associated Projects of the French May Arts Festival, Shimmer of Memory will showcase 20 oil paintings and works on paper from 2012 to 2023. Ziad Dalloul's work invites viewers to explore a world where the visible and the imagined converge. Dalloul's masterful use of visual and sensory abundance probes the boundaries between the natural and metaphysical worlds. In his paintings, static objects, lived spaces, and ever-shifting landscapes intertwine, dispersing shimmering memories and igniting questions of humanity's bond with nature.
Born in Syria in 1953 and based in Paris since 1984, Ziad Dalloul has started his artistic journey with engraving and paintings using traditional materials such as black and sepia ink, oil, canvas, and handmade paper. Skilled in painting, etching and artists' books, Dalloul is considered to be among the most accomplished artists from the Arab world.
Over two decades, Dalloul's work has focused on the intricate connection between humans and nature. His work fuses interior and exterior spaces, crafting a parallel world where contradictions, intuition, and reimagined memory are integrated. Dalloul's large triptychs, almost life-sized, invite viewers into an immersive encounter, as in The Last Supper II (2018), life abounds in fluid strokes and chiaroscuro rendered in vibrant hues of red, violet, and green on a table of feast amidst the untamed forest.
In his paintings, though human figures are absent, their essence pervades through everyday objects — beds, chairs, tables, and curtains — signifying birth and death, wisdom and the sacred, shared spaces and celebration, and the passage between realms. Water acts as a bridge among the elements, bestowing a sense of stability and movement. Fluidity whispers the ephemeral nature of time, each brushstroke tenderly cradling the transient, with beds, tables, and curtains transforming into cascades, rivers, and cataracts, branches bend like flowing water, bursting with sensory abundance.
In Dalloul's words, "Through image and imagination, with visual vocabularies, drawing and painting, I traverse the paths towards the physical paths of the visible and towards the metaphysical boundaries of the invisible." The exhibition Shimmer of Memory offers a visual eloquence of Ziad Dalloul's artistic vision, inviting viewers to explore the depths of human connection with nature and confront life's fleeting beauty in this ever-evolving dynamic.
