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Ghassan Zard is a Lebanese painter and sculptor born in 1954. He lives and works in Beirut. He has participated in multiple group shows such as “Vous avez dit abstrait?” Galerie Tanit, Beirut, 2013.

Initially his painting was influenced by lyrical abstraction. His large-scale canvases depict a coloured rhythmic universe reminiscent of music partitions. Compared to his pictorial work, his sculptures are more restrained but always tinted with irony.

Combining polished wood, aluminum and raw steel, Zard creates a bestiary of forms, interpreting the anatomy of reality to recreate a personal mythology. Playful by all appearances, his sculptures hide something that is deeply settled in the artist’s approach. Beyond the shape, something tries to come to the surface, the naked wood, full of life, is stapled with a rigorous but intermittent violence. It seems to contain a body in the making, a tacit entity, however, extremely present, waiting in the heart of every piece.

Dreamlike animals become a metaphor for human beings and represent an artist’s desire to give a protective and ludic shape to an old “souvenir”. Buried in the subconscious digression, this sculpture can be read as the return of the repressed, skillfully formed, skillfully mastered.