Art on 56th is pleased to announce “Still Life”, a solo-exhibition of works by Bettina Khoury Badr. Both a professor and an artist, her ‘still lives’ confront the abstract with the representational, the gestural and the still. Weaving traditional modes of painting with modern aesthetics, she produces ideological canvases that revolve around the experiential.

Bettina Khoury Badr invites her viewers to delve into the reactional, by stimulating the subconscious and triggering a response from the imagination. Her paintings glow; they are quasi-monochrome, minimalistic and gestural in their application of pigment and medium. The artist conceives shapes through colour and contrast, reducing subjects to their basic physical forms. She delves into memory and experience and depicts fragments of reality. However, she decontextualizes objects and rids them of their functionality. They thus become absolute objects to the beholder, who then is free to interpret the result as he/she is wishes.

The works showcased can be divided into two categories: those that are representational and those that are purely abstract. However, some of Bettina Khoury Badr’s works marry the two, creating shadowed realities and fractured compositions. Her canvases are gestural, allowing the eye to focus on beyond what is depicted, on colour, form and texture. The art of painting itself radiates the dichotomy between saturation and void.

The artist experiments with the different realities surrounding a certain realm, and constructs experiences around viewing an artwork. She plays with the term ‘Still Life’, and our expectations surrounding that title and subject matter. She revisits the portraiture of inanimate objects, yet invites us to adapt our perspective to the modernization of this traditional and timeless theme. Bettina Khoury Badr’s oeuvre radiates purity and spirituality, while raising questions on existentialism.