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Marwan Sahmarani (1970)
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Marwan Sahmarani was born in Beirut in 1970 and graduated from
the Atelier Met de Penninghen in Paris, France in 1989. He
derives his inspiration from the themes of art history, surfing
between his Western cultural education and his oriental
identity, blending Islamic and Mesopotamian art and iconography
with that of ancient Greece and Rome in addition to the great
masters including Uccello, Rubens, and Picasso. Sahmarani has
participated in a variety of solo exhibitions in London, Dubai,
Canada and Beirut as well as group exhibitions in Munich,
Washington DC and Mexico. His most recent group museum
exhibitions are “Told/ Untold / Retold” at the Arab Museum of
Modern Art, Doha, Qatar in 2010 and The Feast of the Damned at
the Museum of Art & Design, New York, USA in 2010. Sahmarani was
also one of three recipients of the prestigious Abraaj Capital
Art Prize in 2010 and his work 'The Feast of the Damned' was
showcased at Art Dubai that year.
Sahmarani uses oil painting, ink, and watercolor as his primary
mediums of expression. His work is often about politics,
sociology, war, and sexuality. The content of his paintings
bathes in a surrealist mood where the limit between dream,
fiction and reality no longer exists. With just a few strokes of
charcoal, light brushes of paint and traces of pastel, all of
which merely graze the paper, his paintings suddenly transform
from tender caress into full-fledged battle. The artist brushes
with death and flirts with madness, leaving no viewer untouched.
Perfectly mastered strokes translate a unique language that is
at once raw and bare, and has become Sahmarani’s very own
signature. In spite of his roots in painting and drawing, he
stretches his practice onto other forms including sculpture,
ceramics and performance. What strengthens his skill is the fact
that all of facets of his work are tied together and support
each other completely, forming part of a stable, strong personal
expression, which is his very own.
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