Nabil Nahas and the relationship between geometry and nature: a look at the Tethys exhibition at Lawrie Shabibi.
As we immerse ourselves in Nahas's 'Tethys' exhibition at Lawrie Shabibi in Dubai, we are invited to explore the intricate relationship between geometry and nature in his recent works.
Tethys, the solo show by Nabil Nahas at Lawrie Shabibi, sees a retreat into nature in the face of challenging realities.
Bursts of colour and a personal fusion of geometry and nature characterise the oeuvre of Lebanese-American artist, Nabil Nahas, who has returned to Lawrie Shabibi for his solo exhibition, Tethys. Born in 1949 in Beirut, the artist’s youth was divided between Egypt and Lebanon before he left to study in the USA. A graduate of Yale’s Fine Art program, he was a student of American Abstract Expressionist painter, Al Held, whose influence left an imprint on his artistic practice. Situating himself amidst the cultural landscape of 1970s New York, Nahas immersed himself in the artistic milieu of the moment.
The first reaction triggered by the exhibition Les Racines du Giel is that Nabil Nahas (b 1949 in Lebanon) is by no means a painter whose work has developed in a linear way. On the contrary, even after a career spanning over more than 40 years, his practice remains exciting, challenging, unpredictable, at times seemingly contradictory, but ultimately, everything makes sense and falls into place.
The new exhibition by Nabil Nahas at Château La Coste in the south of France gathers together all of the celebrated Lebanese-American artist’s favourite things: starfish, fractals, geometry and the boundless universe.
Words by Y-Jean Mun-Delsalle
Set out across two spaces at the glorious Château La Coste, Nabil Nahas’s exhibition ‘Grounded in the Sky’ simultaneously explores the wonder of nature and the fragility of humankind
The Parisian appartement of Nabil Nahas sits overlooking a lush courtyard a stone’s throw away from the Place de l’Opera. The space, where the artist has lived for just over two years, is filled with a museum worthy collection of Jean Royère furniture. “Things I had in storage” he says, waving around the room at the goat hair covered Baquet armchair. “I didn’t want the space to feel too bourgeois” he adds with a smile when I point out the bare electric wires poking out from behind a light fixture.
Pour sa première exposition personnelle en France, « Les Racines du ciel » présentée par CMS Collection au Château La Coste jusqu’au 13 juin 2023, Nabil Nahas réunit deux facettes essentielles de son travail, ses constellations, leurs références géométriques, et son travail plus intime qui prend racine au Liban. Il fait le choix de présenter ensemble ses séries « Spiral/trees » réunissant là ses inspirations : le végétal, le vivant et les cieux. « La nature, la géométrie, sont le début de tout. Le nombre d’or qui ressort de la façon dont une tige pousse. » Nabil Nahas
Celebrated for his three-dimensional, multi-layered paintings marrying geometry and nature and bursting with vivid color and texture, Lebanese-American artist Nabil Nahas’ first solo exhibition in France, “Grounded in the Sky”, proposes two series of recent works and a never-before-seen outdoor sculpture – his largest to date – evoking a mysterious marine creature. On show until June 13, 2023 at Château La Coste in Provence, the artworks are spread across two gallery spaces of the wine estate: the Renzo Piano Pavilion and the Old Wine Storehouse rehabilitated by Jean-Michel Wilmotte. Large-scale cosmic “Constellation” compositions, referencing both seabed and sky, appear to be pulsating, in perpetual movement, while tortured, apocalyptic depictions of trees emblematic of his homeland – cedars, olives and palms – transform the space into a gallery of botanical portraits, where each appears to lay bare its soul, as viewers are plunged into the artist’s heavy-hearted mental landscape. I sit down with Nahas to discuss his origins and the creative process behind the works in this exhibition.
PARIS: Nabil Nahas, un artiste peintre et sculpteur libano-américain, né en 1949 à Beyrouth et diplômé des beaux-arts à l’université de Yale en 1972, a exposé dans les plus grands musées et galeries à travers le monde, dont Sperone Westwater et Holly Solomon Gallery, à New York; Baumgartner Gallery, à Washington; Milleventi, à Milan; Boston Museum; Lawrie Shabibi, à Dubaï; Saleh Barakat Gallery, à Beyrouth; Ben Brown Fine Arts, à Hong Kong ou encore au British Museum. Il présente ses œuvres pour la première fois en France au Château La Coste, à Aix-en-Provence, du 1er avril au 13 juin 2023.
Nabil Nahas enveloppe le Château La Coste dans sa magie...À la faveur de « Racines du ciel », sa première exposition solo française accueillie au Château La Coste et dont la production a été confiée à CMS Collection, l’artiste américano-libanais déploie les différentes nuances et textures de son œuvre protéiforme, entre ses constellations qui lient l’infime à l’infini, et ses oliviers troublants d’humanité. Il présente également ses sculptures secouées d’une magie qui est la sienne...
New York-based American-Lebanese artist Nabil Nahas grew up in Cairo and Beirut and studied fine arts at Yale University. Over the course of a phenomenal career, the 69-year-old artist has had exhibits at some of New York’s most important galleries, in addition to exhibits in Paris, Beirut and São Paulo, always reinventing himself by exploring new artistic techniques. Throughout the years, his paintings have been abstract, pointillistic or impressionistic, and sometimes a mixture of all three techniques. Most recently, his works have been inspired by Lebanon’s magnificent cedar trees, providing a moving artistic tribute to the country of his birth
Nabil Nahas creates stamp for Lebanon's 75 Years of Independence
New York-based artist Nabil Nahas was born in Beirut in 1949, then spent his formative years between Egypt and Lebanon before leaving for the United States to attend college. Now, Nahas still periodically returns to his birthplace. He started painting at a young age and quickly became interested in abstraction.....
AYK: Why do you think the Americans elected Trump?
NN: This is a very serious political question....
It’s clear that everything that is happening is alarming, to say the least, but I would definitely prefer to educate rather than retaliate.
Nabil Nahas and Alain Kirili (Holly Solomon Gallery, 724 Fifth Avenue, at 57th Street): Looking at Nabil Nahas's new paintings is like walking into a Latin American rain forest
Nabil Nahas is an American painter whose work does not so much “contain multitudes” as it reconciles opposites. Whether implicitly or explicitly, Nahas’s work explores extremes of size, scale, temperature and mood; and seemingly polarized concepts such as nature and artifice, materiality and immateriality
Peintre de la nature et de la géométrie, Nabil Nahas travaille avec un plan précis. Les toiles qu'il livre sont à la fois rigoureuses et luxuriantes. Attaché à rendre compte d'un univers en mutation, il n'en oublie pas moins que le monde est régi par des règles biendéterminées.
It must be hard to give painterliness a new twist these days, but Nabil Nahas’s recent abstract works manage to do so. Literally building up the painterly surface, shaping a mixture of ground pumice and acrylic into what look like organic forms, which he then repaints, the artist gives gesture fresh resonance. His richly textured surfaces, teeming with life and often …
For Lebanese painter, Nabil Nahas, memories of an experience in nature serve as inspiration for his optically-charged paintings of starfish and olive trees. Nahas invited ARTINFO to his New York City studio to preview works for his upcoming exhibit.
Lebanese-American artist Nabil Nahas, whose work has been exhibited all over the world, brings his striking, large-scale works—including a few new pieces—to FIAF’s Gallery.
Nabil Nahas brings his inimitable sense of scale, opulence, and sheer sumptousness back to Dubai this November with a second solo exhibition at Lawrie Shabibi. Focusing this time on his three-dimensional paintings, as tactile as they are optical,
After a particularly heavy storm in 1991, the artist Nabil Nahas took a walk along Southampton Beach in Long Island, New York, and found it littered with starfish, spewed out by the recently tumultuous sea.
Well before the current heightened interest in contemporary art of the Middle East, Nahas had established his reputation in New York art circles as a master of colour, texture and atmosphere.
Nabil Nahas is a delight. We met with him early this year at his studio in Chelsea, overlooking the Hudson, as he was putting the finishing touches on his solo show at Sperone Westwater (on view through May 4 ).
If one person has found his vocation in painting it is unquestionably Nabil Nahas. Not only does he have a communicative love for the medium, but also his work is testimony to his dedication to and joy of exploring painting
Nabil Nahas is perhaps best known for dense, monochromatic acrylic paintings that employ the rigid geometries of Islamic patterning.
We saw your paintings in a solo show in Lawrie Shabibi (Fractals) in November and some of your older work at Art Dubai in March.
Tabitha Piseno interviews painter Nabil Nahas on the occasion of the exhibition of new paintings at Sperone Westwater, New York, on view from April 5 - May 4, 2013.
Born in Beirut in 1949, Nabil Nahas spent the first decade of his life in Cairo before returning to his native country of Lebanon, where he remained until 1968.