Anita Rogers Gallery is thrilled to introduce Anas Albraehe to the gallery’s roster of artists with an online solo exhibition featuring both select older works and large paintings from this past year. The exhibition will be presented via a digital catalog, as well as with an online viewing room hosted on ArtLand.
The artist starts each painting from life, never from photographs, and then lets his imagination guide the rest of the way, particularly with color choices. The resulting paintings are intuitive, soulful and balanced explorations of color and shape. The artist draws inspiration from Henri Matisse and Paul Gauguin, while at the same time instilling his own unique perspective and sensitivity in the work.
The artist frequently paints sleeping subjects—while asleep, we are vulnerable, quiet, dreaming, free from the chaos of our everyday lives and onslaught of news and information. All men sleep and all are equal in sleep. Albraehe states:
The quilt wraps us up in our joys and sorrows and allows us to surrender ourselves and move away from life, if even for a few hours. When we are asleep, we are all alike—whether you are sleeping in a palace or a child sleeping in the street, both are absent from reality, and the quilt is as intimate as your own house. In the context of my paintings, each quilt takes on a different colour to show it as a unique home to its sleeper.
Born in Syria in 1991, Anas Albraehe is a multidisciplinary artist focused on painting and theatre. He graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Painting and Drawing from Damascus University of Fine Arts in Syria in 2014. After the beginning of the war in Syria, he moved to Lebanon where he obtained a Master's degree in Psychology and Art Therapy from the Lebanese University in 2015. His recent work combines his interests in the fields of art and psychology to produce a portrait that explores the psychology of color and the gaze of the Other. Anas Albraehe's solo exhibition, entitled Manal, was held at Artspace Hamra in Lebanon and Wadi Finan in Jordan in 2017. He also participated in two group exhibitions at Al-Bareh Gallery in Bahrain in 2015 and Artspace Hamra in 2016. Anas Albraehe participated in SAFIR TA'AROF 2017, an art workshop within the framework of the Sharjah Art Biennale, 2016-2017. He exhibited two series at the Agial Gallery in Beirut, The Dream Catcher in 2018 and Mother Earth in 2020.
Anas Albraehe has worked on several successive series of paintings, each time taking as subject precise elements of his environment in Syria and Lebanon. He is inspired by the people around him but also by memories of his home region.