The paintings of the series La Déchirure reflect our reality: a fractured duality. Colors juxtapose on the canvas and don’t intermingle; the worlds are inconsolable. La Déchirure or being ripped out from one universe to feel lost in a second, from a status quo into an unsettling state. Ghassan Zard’s La Déchirure focuses on the interruption we recently experienced. The works come from the in-between state that follows the a rupturing phenomenon.

Ghassan Zard is a Lebanese painter and sculptor born in 1954. He lives and works in Beirut. “The approach to painting and sculpture awakens in us the innocence of our childhood games.” The work of Ghassan Zard is thus tinged with nostalgia, with a need to return to the wonder of childhood, to fun as a concept. The beings disappear in flakes, in colored shreds. There is a separation between thought and feeling; An inexplicable twist of the mind leads to an almost automatic reconstitution that we do not perceive until later!

“This journey is also an act to ward off murderous madness and transcend the anguish of everyday life.” Initially, Zard’s painting was influenced by lyrical abstraction. His large-scale canvases depict a colored rhythmic universe reminiscent of music partitions. Compared to his pictorial work, his sculptures are more restrained but always tinted with irony.Ghassan Zard has participated in multiple group shows such as “Vous avez dit abstrait?” Galerie Tanit, Beirut, 2013; “Jardins de Bagatelle II,” Galerie Tanit, Munich, 2014; and “A Bestiary,” Galerie Tanit, Beirut, 2020. His solo shows include “Variations,” Galerie Tanit, Beirut, 2014; “Turtles,” an installation commissioned for Home Works 7, Ashkal Alwan, a collaboration between Galerie Tanit and the Institut Français in 2015 that saw the giant turtles placed all across Lebanon before being “settled” at the MACAM museum in 2016; “Lucy in the Sky,” Galerie Tanit, Beirut, 2017; “On a Shore,” Galerie Tanit, Beirut, 2019; “La Déchirure,” Galerie Tanit, Beirut, 2021; “I Am One Acquainted with the Night,” Studio LaCitta, Verona, 2021, the Venice Biennale, in addition to multiple international shows.