Galerie Claude Lemand

CHAOUKI CHOUKINI - Donation Claude & France Lemand

Thanks to the Claude & France Lemand Donation, the Museum of the Institut du monde arabe in Paris has the most impor­tant col­lec­tion in the world of wooden and bronze sculp­tures by Chaouki CHOUKINI.
___

Sculptures in wood:
 Lieu, 1976. Iroko, 88,5 x 65,5 x 62 cm.
 L’Heure de Midi, 1977. Wangué, 50 x 50 x 40 cm.
 Paysage au Clair de Lune, 1978. Noyer, 84 x 70 x 25 cm.
 Paysage événement, 1979. Wangué, 50 x 40 x 35 cm.
 Porte du Désert, 1998. Wangué, 50 x 41 x 16 cm.
 Edith, Petite fleur, 2000. Wangué, 122 x 36 x 16 cm.
 Dulle Griet, Hommage à Brueghel, 2001. Chêne, 62 x 50 x 45 cm.
 Tango des fau­vettes, 2004. Ebène vert, 51 x 36 x 20,5 cm.
 Liberté fauve, 2012. Iroko, 145 x 43 x 26 cm.
 Le Sacre du Printemps, 2011. Iroko, 128 x 50 x 8 cm.
 Les envi­rons de Damas, 2012-13. Murale, iroko, 45 x 143 x 4,5 cm.
___

Sculptures in bronze:
 Architecture, 2004. Bronze orig­inal, 42 x 20 x 7,5 cm.
 Petit Prince. Enfant de Gaza, 2010. Bronze, 120 x 52 x 34 cm.
 Le Cheval de Guernica, 2009-2011. Bronze, 154 x 84 x 34 cm.
 Clair de Lune, 1978-2018. Bronze orig­inal, 155 x 20 x 30 cm.
 Fenêtres, 2012. Bronze, 41 x 21,5 x 9 cm.
 Portrait de l’Oiseau-Qui-N’Existe-Pas 1, 2013. Bronze, 17 x 12 x 8 cm.
 Portrait de l’Oiseau-Qui-N’Existe-Pas 2, 2013. Bronze, 20 x 10 x 9 cm.
 Pour Beyrouth, 2020. Bronze, 153 x 65 x 30 cm.
___

Thierry Savatier (extracts):
Chaouki Choukini’s sculp­tures bear wit­ness to his sin­gular aes­thetic. Abstract, they nev­er­the­less include some min­eral or bio­log­ical details, even anthro­po­mor­phic or that can be inter­preted as such (Liberté fauve). His strange formal con­struc­tions some­times seem to defy the laws of bal­ance; they pre­sent unex­pected recesses or pro­jec­tions that plunge the viewer into an imag­i­nary that is both dream­like and all the more dis­turbing as the soft­ness of the impec­cably pol­ished sur­faces con­trasts with the some­times dark char­acter of the whole (Paysage au clair de lune, 1978 ; Lieu, 1978). When we know that the artist works with wood or stone in direct carving, we mea­sure his dex­terity in playing with mate­rial / light oppo­si­tions to make the most of them.

Spirituality and meta­physics mark the plas­ticity of his works, just as humanity per­me­ates them (Little Prince. Child of Gaza, 2010). However, the artist does not refrain from paying homage to the art of his pre­de­ces­sors, some­times with a cer­tain sur­re­alist humor (Hommage à Breughel, 2001) or an attrac­tion for tragic alle­gory, like this very totemic Horse of Guernica (wood, 2010; bronze, 2011) of which Picasso, no more than of the bull, did not reveal the secret sym­bolism, leaving the viewer his free inter­pre­ta­tion. The fig­ures of Chaouki Choukini, whether they recall land­scapes or even satel­lite views (Les Environs de Damas, 2012) in their hor­i­zon­tality or that they chal­lenge the sky in their ver­ti­cality (Li Bayrut, 2020), are striking with their min­i­malist aes­thetic , undoubt­edly inherited from his Japanese expe­ri­ence which came to sup­ple­ment his Eastern and Western sen­si­bil­i­ties.