Ayyam Gallery Beirut
January 20, 2011 – February 28, 2011
Beirut Tower, Ground Floor, Zeitoune Street, Beirut
+961 1 374450
www.ayyamgallery.com

“Venus of the Clouds” is a solo exhibition of Syrian painter and sculptor Mounzer Kamnakache. Known for sensual figures that possess mythical overtones, Kamnakache is a prominent artist of his generation. With his latest body of work he resumes the themes found in earlier pastels with the buttery forms of his female protagonist dominating airy compositions.

Interested in the origins of man and the cyclic rhythms of nature that define our existence, his rubenesque heroines stand as symbolic representations of “the connector,” that which gives a “pulse” and “tenderness” to life. Surrounded by the serenity of a cloud-filled sky, Kamnakache’s nude goddess-like subject is shown in the midst of regeneration, as new creatures are born and the heavens seem to welcome them.

Born in 1935, Syrian artist Mounzer Kamnakache works in sculpture and pastels, creating ethereal works that are at once existential and mythological. A graduate from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus in 1968, he went on to pursue graduate studies in Paris, where he spent nearly two decades. Returning to his country of origin in the 1990s, he took up a teaching position at his alma mater and currently resides between Switzerland and Syria. A respected multidisciplinary artist, his
sculptures and paintings have been shown in prominent galleries in the Middle East and Europe.