Galerie Claude Lemand

KEVORK MOURAD.

Artiste mul­ti­mé­dia (pein­tu­res, des­sins, per­for­man­ces, videos), Kevork Mourad est un armé­nien de Syrie né en 1970. Il s’établit à New York après ses années de for­ma­tion en Arménie, mais il conti­nue à voya­ger au Proche-Orient et en Europe.

L’artiste tire son ins­pi­ra­tion de son double héri­tage arabe et armé­nien et ses œuvres sont mar­quées par un sens aigu de l’Histoire. Il voit son oeuvre comme un miroir du Temps, reflé­tant une ver­sion du pré­sent, une réfrac­tion du passé, révé­lant au spec­ta­teur ce qu’il y recher­che, en un jeu de la signi­fi­ca­tion qui spi­rale à tra­vers le temps. Inspirées par le concept cal­li­gra­phi­que d’incor­po­rer une richesse de pensée en une sim­pli­cité de la ligne, les oeu­vres de Mourad offrent en pre­mière sur­face un ges­tuel plein de sym­bo­lisme et fai­sant réfé­rence à la cal­li­gra­phie arabe, aux motifs et aux minia­tu­res armé­nien­nes. La deuxième couche de l’oeuvre est le sujet du tableau, ayant géné­ra­le­ment un rap­port étroit avec les ques­tions poli­ti­ques et socia­les actuel­les.

Tom Laurent, site artab­so­lu­ment.com, 20 jan­vier 2015.
Plasticien armé­nien de Syrie né en 1970, Kevork Mourad a col­la­boré avec de nom­breux com­po­si­teurs et inter­prè­tes au profit d’expé­rien­ces mul­ti­mé­dias où conso­nent entre eux la vir­tuo­sité de son dessin et sa dimen­sion musi­cale, faites d’accents gra­phi­ques et de repri­ses, au Mucem notam­ment à la fin 2013 avec le soliste syrien Kinan Azmeh. Les pein­tu­res pré­sen­tées chez Claude Lemand, datées de 2009 à 2011, œuvrent dans le sens de cette trans­crip­tion ryth­mée, ne serait-ce que par la vitesse qui carac­té­rise leur exé­cu­tion gra­phi­que. En effet, Kevork Mourad les réa­lise en deux temps : les plages colo­rées appo­sées tout d’abord sont pré­ci­sées par le filtre de son dessin. Celui-ci mêle bribes de figu­ra­tion, cal­li­gra­phie ins­pi­rée par la tra­di­tion arabe et dis­sé­mi­na­tion de motifs orien­taux, notam­ment armé­niens. Ce syn­cré­tisme trouve dans les varia­tions de son geste gra­phi­que, allant du cerne à l’évanescence, un espace pro­pice au songe. Au sein du corpus pré­senté – une dizaine de toiles –, cer­tai­nes sont par­cou­rues de réseaux gra­phi­ques ver­ti­caux s’échappant en volu­tes. Elles fixent un état vapo­reux, à la façon de fume­rol­les, qui indi­quent sans doute le souf­fle et l’ins­pi­ra­tion. Dans leur indé­ter­mi­na­tion, ces gran­des toiles en appel­lent néan­moins à la reprise de grands sujets bibli­ques ou mytho­lo­gi­ques, comme l’indi­quent leurs titres : Eros, Fruit défendu ou Gloire.

Textes en Anglais :

1. An Armenian born in Syria, Kevork Mourad draws highly from the dual influen­ces of his heri­tage. A sense of his­tory is embed­ded in his line. Inspired by the cal­li­gra­phic concept of put­ting much thought into limi­ted line, Mourad’s works deal with a first layer of ges­ture laden with mea­ning—refe­ren­cing Arabic cal­li­gra­phy, Armenian motifs and minia­tu­res. The second layer is the sub­ject matter at hand, usually refe­ren­cing poli­ti­cal and social issues of the pre­sent. The artist sees his work as a mirror in time : reflec­ting a ver­sion of the pre­sent, refrac­ting images of the past, revea­ling to the obser­ver what he or she seeks within it, in a dance of mea­ning that spi­rals through time.

2. Kevork Mourad was born in 1970 in Kamechli, a town in the upper rea­ches of Syria. Of Armenian origin, he recei­ved his MFA from the Yerevan Institute of Fine Arts in Armenia, and he now lives and works in New York. For the first time in Paris, the Claude Lemand Gallery will hold a solo show of his pain­tings in January-February and a group show in the Grand Palais, Art Paris Art Fair 2015. Mourad’s most recent exhi­bits were group shows at White Box Gallery in New York City and at the World Bank in Washington, DC. His digi­tal piece, The Map of Future Movements, toured as part of a group exhi­bi­tion in Jerusalem and Ramallah, and was in the 2010 Liverpool Biennial. He has had solo exhi­bi­tions at the Contemporary Art Platform in Kuwait, 2014, Gallery Z in Providence, RI and at JK Gallery in Los Angeles. He has exhi­bi­ted at Rafia Gallery in Damascus, Syria. His solo exhi­bi­tion was also shown at the Courtyard Gallery in Dubai in 2010. Five of his pieces are in the per­ma­nent col­lec­tion on the 70th floor of the Bourj Khalife in Dubai. He also par­ti­ci­pa­ted in Art Moment 2014, in Budapest, Hungary, with an exhi­bi­tion and live pain­ting.

The dyna­mic move­ment in Mourad’s com­po­si­tions reflects his strong inte­rest in the rela­tion­ship bet­ween the visual arts and music. A signi­fi­cant part of his artis­tic prac­tice invol­ves the tech­ni­que of spon­ta­neous pain­ting, in which he crea­tes work during live per­for­man­ces with musi­cians. Mourad show­ca­ses this enga­ge­ment with musi­ca­lity through his dan­cing figu­res on canvas. With his tech­ni­que of spon­ta­neous pain­ting, where he shares the stage with musi­cians - a col­la­bo­ra­tion in which art and music deve­lop in coun­ter­point to each other - he has worked with many world class musi­cians. He is a member, as a visual artist, of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble. He has per­for­med at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Chelsea Museum of Art, The Bronx Museum of Art, the Rhode Island School of Design, the Chess Festival of Mexico City, The Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art in Yerevan, Le Festival du Monde Arabe in Montreal, the Stillwater Festival, the Nara Museum in Japan, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Rubin Museum of Art, Harvard University, Lincoln Center Atrium, the American Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Central Park’s Summerstage with the Silk Road Ensemble and Bobby McFerrin.

As a tea­ching artist with the Silk Road, he has worked with public school stu­dents throu­ghout the five boroughs of New York, and has been called back many times as a favo­rite visi­ting artist. In 2010 and 2011, with actress/singer Anaïs Tekerian of Zulal, he co-pro­du­ced and crea­ted two multi-media plays, Tangled Yarn and Waterlogged, which pre­mie­red at the New York International Fringe Festival and toured San Francisco and the Berkshires. His most recent per­for­mance, Home Within, crea­ted with Kinan Azmeh, has been tou­ring Europe and North America for the past year.

3. In Mourad’s work there is a sense of his­tory embed­ded in line. Inspired by the concept in Asian art of put­ting much thought into limi­ted line, Mourad’s works deal with a first layer of ges­tu­res that are laden with mea­ning. This first layer refe­ren­ces Arabic cal­li­gra­phy, Armenian motifs and minia­tu­res, the few ges­tu­res of his line sup­por­ted by a long his­tory. This first layer serves as a guide into the second layer, which is the sub­ject matter at hand, also very much influen­ced by the ancient his­tory of the artist’s heri­tage. In confron­ting a work that is directly ins­pi­red by the ancient cultu­res that came before it, the obser­ver can feel the long line of his­tory sup­por­ting the pre­sent, the tumul­tuous pre­sent taking ins­pi­ra­tion and hope from the past.