Untitled, 2019

mixed media on canvas, 90 x 70 cm

George Merheb was born in Lebanon in 1960 where he currently works and resides. He obtained a Master’s degree in Drawing and Painting from the Lebanese University of Beirut, Lebanon. Merheb completed a number of specialized courses in Venice, Italy for the restoration of historic monuments, frescoes and wall decoration. His most noted accomplishments include a limited edition lithography at the National Museum of Beirut, a 450 m2 painting of murals for the Chantier Fence in Beirut Central District and 250 m2 painting of murals at the Saint Antoine Church in Baabdat, Lebanon.

 

For the past 100 years the Near and the Middle-East was and still a playground of several Massacres. The scream of victims, the captives, the violation, slaughtering people, waiting death, etc. are what George Merheb shows in his paintings. He expresses his outrage and concern for those sufferings and his works become the voice to speak out.

For George Merheb writing and drawing have shared destinies. He juggles with lines, colors and letters with a dizzying mixture of features and curves. His brush navigates the canvas in a falsely chaotic way, eliminating alphabets, codified drawings that refer to ideas or simply an expression or impression that becomes a performance.  

 

Haunted by letters, their dimension in time and space, and their energy beyond their form, George Merheb offers a systematic demolition of traditional writings in his works for the benefit of a new global language.

 

‘The waltz continues and seems to turn letters and words into musical notes. The letters continue to build unreadable words. The indecipherable words continue to construct ambiguous ideas and shady stories.’ The artist describes his paintings as scattered drawings allowing the viewer to find a piece of wire that leads to other puzzles, an infinite world of letters.

Everything happens as if the artist is rebelling against the words, their sense, their ambiguity to breathe a new soul beyond grafitti, calligraphy, graphics, texting, their signs and pictograms. He offers us a new perception of things where a new audience participates in the dialogue without any rules or codes, allowing himself to be carried away by the intimacy of the artist’s expression. 

 

This pictorial Babel questions the articulation between the plurality of languages and alphabets; transforming themselves permanently, as immobile and sometimes abstract, but still animated by a supernatural magic of the artist’s gestures and actions proving that creativity never fades.

 

 

Merheb’s work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout Europe and the Arab world. George has also participated in several international fairs in France, Switzerland, Egypt and Lebanon.

His most noted accomplishments include limited edition lithography’s at the “National Museum” of Beirut, - Lebanon, a 450m2 painting of murals for “Chantier Fence” in Beirut Central District and 250m2 paintings of murals at “St Antoine Church” Baabdat, - Lebanon.