Written by
LIAM SIBAI
Sacha Abou Khalil, a self-taught painter, was born in Serbia in 1964 and raised in Lebanon[i]. As a young boy, Abou Khalil would pass the time by drawing portraits of different politicians and celebrities he saw on television and in magazines. This is a practice that would inform his body of work to this very day. Abou Khalil completed his secondary education at the Champville Marist College[ii] in Mount Lebanon, in 1982[iii]. The following year, he enrolled at the Strasbourg School of Medicine in France, graduating in 1990 as a state doctor in dental surgery.
As his career as a dentist progressed, so did his talent as an artist. Abou Khalil began to focus on reproducing pre-existing artworks[iv]. He recreated works by artists like Rodin and Rosa Bonheur, such as Bonheur's Ploughing in Nivernais,1849, an oil on canvas painting depictingtwo teams of oxen ploughing the land. To date, Ploughing in Nivernaissits still unfinished in the artist’s Italian residence. Abou Khalil explained that he “painted…the kind of things a dentist would paint."[v],in a recent interview, as he painted in a largely academic, mimetic style without trying to be too inventive. All of this endeavor, though, was still a hobby for Abou Khalil.
Abou Khalil practiced dentistry in France for more than three decades[vi]. In 2011, he decided to retire and dedicate all his focus to art. Initially, there needed to be more institutional or commercial success. By 2015, however, he became a recognized portraitist, commissioned by Lebanese public figures, like Lebanese journalist Marcel Ghanem and Lebanese-American journalist Raghida Dergham, to capture their essence. After this recognition, Abou Khalil partook in several group exhibitions in Beirut in places like Galerie Fadi Moghabghab, Saleh Barakat Gallery, and Beit Beirut Museum.
In 2018, Abou Khalil held his first exhibition, showcasing a series of paintings adapted from different novels. The connection between an artwork and the book it was named after was largely nominal. The name of the exhibition,Breaking the Frozen Seas, was inspired by a famous quote written by Austrian novelist Franz Kafka [vii]: “A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”[viii]
The artworks, however, often superficially referenced the novels they were based on. The contents of the paintings were disconnected from the themes present in the novels in most cases. For example, when considering 2019’sSundial, we seea naked woman whose body and erect penis cast a different shadow on nearby surfaces, much like a sundial would. The content of the painting has little to do with the plot of the Shirley Jackson novel “Sundial," which it is named after. Shirley Jackson's novel, however, has two strong female protagonists. Abou Khalil was inspired by the idea of "women with balls," as he expresses it, meaning strong women, namely Lebanese women when painting this work. The female empowerment motif is another example of the indirect parallel Abou Khalil creates between his work and the literature it is inspired by.
Sundial (2019) also features the woman standing on an aggregate of small red flowers. These red flowers first appeared in his 2017 adaptation of Italo Calvino’s novel, The Baron in the Trees. The starkness of red paint also appears in a man's outfit in his painting Notes from Underground,2017, and on the couch in Lolita, 2017. The integration of the striking red color has become almost a signature of the artist[ix], appearing even in his later work on climate change in his piece Managing Stuff(2019).
Driven by his ecological concerns, Abou Khalil produced a series of paintings in early 2020 titledThe Mas(sacred) Mountain. The pieces comprisingThe Mas(sacred) Mountaindepict a quarry in which gravel is industrially produced using the destruction of a mountain. The project articulated human complacency about ecological catastrophe as some pieces featured people smoking hookah (Narghile in Arabic) or playing Backgammon or cards. These people were carrying out culturally relaxing traditions to pass the time while industrial machinery shoveled gravel behind them.
Similar to The Mas(sacred) Mountain, other works, such as Belvedere,2019, and Grignotages II,2019, show the quarry behind birds perched on barbed wire. The birds are drawn uniformly as if they were produced on an assembly line, representing the industrialization of nature[x].These artworks were intended to be displayed as part of an exhibition. Yet, the COVID-19 pandemic forced Abou Khalil to sell the works as part of a singular project without showing them in an exhibition. In late 2020, Abou Khalil tried to hold another show titled Elsewhere. Due to the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, the artist could not carry through and opted to simply produce different oil pieces and sell them as part of a more extensive series.
Through Elsewhere, Abou Khalil wanted to engage the topic of exile, as this is an effect that the artist himself is familiar with. He was born in Serbia, raised in Lebanon, and now resides between Italy and France. Elsewherewas made up of paintings, each inhabited by a young man. In each artwork, this young man sits on open briefcases with his shirt unbuttoned or obliterated. His head resides outside of the frame of each painting. A different colored monochrome provides the background of every piece as if he were sitting down for an anonymous portrait in a studio.
Portraiture informs almost the entirety of Abou Khalil’s practice. He usually asks members of his family and friends to sit for him as models, such as in his 2018 exhibition, Breaking the Frozen Seas. However, his recent works addressing exile depicted an anonymous man sitting in a studio. Nonetheless, Abou Khalil continued to endow his works with his “hyper-realistic” signature style. Hyperrealism is a style of painting and sculpture that not only tries to reproduce the world in an almost photographic manner but also consists of exaggerating and overemphasizing some aspects of the subject matter to make visible that which is not to the human eye[xi]. Hyperrealism points towards the emphasis on tactility, texture, and material present throughout Abou Khalil’s oeuvre. His works engender an awareness of the surfaces of the objects they portray, such as with his trademark stark red flowers. Abou Khalil achieves this tactility by applying oil exclusively on rough surfaces. He also achieves this tactility by articulating darker colors that have a lighter undertone, or vice versa, giving a feeling of depth and three-dimensionality.
Abou Khalil’s portraiture in a hyperreal style and signature integration of stark red has made his work immediately recognizable to art lovers. Despite the modest size of Abou Khalil's body of work and its relatively recent nature, the artist has quickly become a singular voice in Lebanon's painting world. Living between Milano and France, Abou Khalil is now working on a series of Diptychs also on the theme of exile.
Edited by WAFA ROZ & ELSIE LABBAN
Notes
[i]“Sacha Abou Khalil,” Artscoops, accessed July 31, 2023, artscoops.com
[ii] Liam Sibai, Interview with Sacha Abou Khalil, other, Dalloul Art Foundation, 2023.
[iii]“Sacha Bou Khalil,” Agial Art Gallery & Saleh Barakat Gallery - abou Khalil, Sacha, accessed August 12, 2023, salehbarakatgallery.com
[iv]Liam Sibai, Interview with Sacha Abou Khalil, other, Dalloul Art Foundation,2023.
[v]ibid.
[vi]“Sacha Abou Khalil,” Artscoops, accessed July 31, 2023, artscoops.com
[vii]Anastasia" class="redactor-autoparser-object">https://artscoops.com/artist-d... Nysten, “Sacha Abou Khalil: Diary of an Artist in Interesting Times,” Selections Arts Magazine, December 3, 2020, selectionsarts.com
[viii] Franz Kafka, “A Quote by Franz Kafka,” Goodreads, accessed September 13, 2023, www.goodreads.com
[ix]Liam Sibai, Interview with Sacha Abou Khalil, other, Dalloul Art Foundation, 2023.
[x]Liam Sibai, Interview with Sacha Abou Khalil, other, Dalloul Art Foundation, 2023.
[xi]Sydney Amoakoh, “What Is Hyperrealism?: Hyperrealism: Exhibitions,” Useum, accessed August 9, 2023, useum.org
Sources
Amoakoh, Sydney. “What Is Hyperrealism? Hyperrealism: Exhibitions.” Useum. Accessed August 9, 2023. useum.org/hyperrealism
Nysten, Anastasia. “Sacha Abou Khalil: Diary of an Artist in Interesting Times.” Selections Arts Magazine, December 3, 2020. selectionsarts.com
"Sacha Bou Khalil.” Agial Art Gallery & Saleh Barakat Gallery - abou Khalil, Sacha. Accessed August 12, 2023. salehbarakatgallery.com
Sacha Abou Khalil: Artist Bio & Art for Sale.” Artscoops. Accessed August 12, 2023. artscoops.com/artist
Sibai, Liam. Interview with Sacha Abou Khalil. Other. Dalloul Art Foundation, 2023
