Hassan Jouni
It is quite an experience, that of an abusive, strong, remarkable, advanced and creative one, where a painter succeeds in moving the characters within his painting. As if he is telling stories and feelings of the situation in Beirut, and in particular of the conditions of the village, that he conveys with him to the city in order to confirm that the bright colors in the South and its sky are the same in shining Beirut when it comes to brightness, noise and stories. He builds blocks and does not care about the margins, seeking diversity of movements and stories. Features are sometimes random and do not take a lot of time to split without getting far from the structural core that is meant to always be the incubator in the center of the painting. It is true that the exhibition has 48 paintings, but stories in each and every one of those paintings are so many more. Visitors can stand long enough before the painting, getting lost in it trying to discover the stories held inside. They revolve around it, and then return to the previous one. They ask, mumble, breathe air and then go back to another scene, to another invention.
A quick few minute long tour in Hassan Jouni's exhibition is enough to draw on your face those storms that surge in his paintings, with a movement varying from the calm colorful breath to the meteorite emotion that attracts his characters, plains and villages and throws them in unknown times and places. It all happens as if these storms take possession of his brushes and pushes them to this expressionist violence every time he smeared them with colors or as if the artist's inside is haunted with all this anger that inflames oil colors and causes this restless revolution. Thus, nothing restrains poetics of sorrow from mixing along with poetics of joy, love and passion in the exhibition. Bridges are in fact already there and it's okay to hold the two extremes. Life actually consists of seasons, from the spring of burning love to the autumn of relations or that of times or that of daily life where colors have another atmosphere filled with strangeness and where space has many internal worlds that keep the wandering eye alert and nervous all the time, where the movement is wrecked in response to tree wrecked branches because of the violent wind and heavy rain. The exhibition is an enriching experience. Every single painting can even be a never boring experience. Some paintings have even been distinguishing marks in the experience of the painter whose glamour always surprises us in transforming the color into an imagination filled with all sorts of expression.
Perhaps what is new about Hassan Jouni is his technique and style in the abstract based on the extension of colors, between literacy and foggy transparency in a blowing and lighting movement. This disparity between ambiguity and clarity, and diagnosis and abstraction, is also seen in the use of blue and red color in abundance as opposite twins, in providing an atmosphere of force and visual tension. What Hassan Jouni means in his urban scenes is far from the popular stories of the people, it’s a world matted with silence and isolation, where he calls the faith heroes of the painting in the common tragedy that beset them, to reach the scene and the depth of the inner symbols of humanity. So human groups, men and women are in cohesion in a mass movement under one umbrella that are threatened by the wind coming from space, blows away their features where their shadows become blurry and their feet begin to sink in the sand. So the painting consisting of two dimensions appears as a platform of a showcase theater, or the sidewalk of a closed street, or an existential margin that gets loud with passionate emotions, symbols and metaphors. The exhibition is an enriching experience. Every single painting can even be a never boring experience. Some paintings have even been distinguishing marks in the experience of the painter whose glamour always surprises us in transforming the color into an imagination filled with all sorts of expression.
Each one of these features and components play a role in the formulation of the "signature" of Hassan Jouni on the painting. However, this signature does not only have a strong presence unless inside a parallel incubator color sensitivity. Color is another vital element in the experience of Jouni. It is the first we catch as we enter the exhibition. The first impression is the color impression. This artist has his tricks in which the visitors fall in turn when they admire his paintings. There is no doubt that warmth of color exists in the exhibition. A mystery in the quality and mix, making the colors appear recent on the cloth. It is shiny, attractive and full of fury and joy, the same joy that is infectiously transmitted to the viewer. There is something like a sweet melody that appeals to the paintings and to the viewers. His work is based on color harmonies, often described as a "Color Anthem", a quality that is worthy of him. Hassan Jouni is a real colorist, who is still betting on color alone, external techniques or new updates- some enticing - did not enter his art of painting. The man wanted to be painter and he remained one. Perhaps this brings us back again to the idea of confidence that makes the dialogue between the artist and his paintings, and his painting and its viewer, feasible and attractive at the same time. This confidence stems from a long-term friendship and an uninterrupted dialogue with colors. According to this, Jouni’s painting looks like it is performed with the strength of craft alone. But this is merely a deceptive illusion that appears on the surface of the painting, while the strenuous practices and ambitions are tucked on the inside
The color relations in Hassan Jouni's paintings are no doubt subject to a general composition system that can be noticed in the painter's art work and that is based on considering the painting as a whole where all the details are present without scattering it and where every detail merges with its environment without any "protuberance" unless it becomes deliberate. If some art pieces require that the spectator stands a certain distance away from them to secure the proper visual conditions (which is what many recommend and consider as taken for granted), the artist's painting does not need this hypothesis on the basis of which the conditions of interaction between the human eye physical capacities and the personal artistic capacity aiming at influencing the spectator change. The details in the painting are basically relative and are only intended to be relative while the inner working self sufficient space becomes an essential constitutional mission to the artist. It is an inner space that has the painting limits as its own and does not surpass its frame. It uses most of the time a style based on the intersection of the vertical axis, whether a human form or another mass, and the horizontal axis that can reach the external frame and maybe surpass it, due to the unlimited character imposed by the surrounding nature logically free from architectural restrictions. The plain thus becomes a picture of the prolongation of the horizon that splits the painting into two parts. Warm colors are present in both parts that are only separated by the blue colors of the clouds. On the yellow platform, human forms are distributed in a spot similar to a vibrant oasis. These forms grow, intensify and are pictured in another painting as two lovers whispering at night around a bouquet of roses, challenging psychological and non psychological destruction surrounding us and symbolizing the hidden optimism we have to discover in Hassan Jouni's painting.
The color relations in Hassan Jouni's paintings are no doubt subject to a general composition system that can be noticed in the painter's art work and that is based on considering the painting as a whole where all the details are present without scattering it and where every detail merges with its environment without any "protuberance" unless it becomes deliberate. If some art pieces require that the spectator stands a certain distance away from them to secure the proper visual conditions (which is what many recommend and consider as taken for granted), the artist's painting does not need this hypothesis on the basis of which the conditions of interaction between the human eye physical capacities and the personal artistic capacity aiming at influencing the spectator change. The details in the painting are basically relative and are only intended to be relative while the inner working self sufficient space becomes an essential constitutional mission to the artist. It is an inner space that has the painting limits as its own and does not surpass its frame. It uses most of the time a style based on the intersection of the vertical axis, whether a human form or another mass, and the horizontal axis that can reach the external frame and maybe surpass it, due to the unlimited character imposed by the surrounding nature logically free from architectural restrictions. The plain thus becomes a picture of the prolongation of the horizon that splits the painting into two parts. Warm colors are present in both parts that are only separated by the blue colors of the clouds. On the yellow platform, human forms are distributed in a spot similar to a vibrant oasis. These forms grow, intensify and are pictured in another painting as two lovers whispering at night around a bouquet of roses, challenging psychological and non psychological destruction surrounding us and symbolizing the hidden optimism we have to discover in Hassan Jouni's painting.
People, people of every day, of cafes and of public places, have a strong presence that almost takes the chronic unemployment that colors the episodes of their lives away. And the story of these people is the subject of the diverse stories of an artist who creates in each painting a free mobile space structure in balance as if it makes out of the vacuum a seat and out of the light a physical material that supports whoever stands above it. He is a wonderful hand-storyteller with a catchy eye and a free imagination, and at the same time, he is like someone who is bird singing outside the thick moustache of nature painters of the Lebanese artists, I might even add: Arab artists. Hassan Jouni is a “Colorist”, moist, soft, honest in his structural expression, has a strong language, handy in his architecture, elegant in his proportions and attractive in his structure no matter how we explain his paintings or the nature of his style. As if the lure of people is his aim, so he doubles his efforts to amaze the viewer or to get the crowd of people to become his fans. He is to feel worried if he were the first to be dazzled.