THE ARTS CLUB PRESENTS SARAH BUCKNER & WASSEF BOUTROS-GHALI
The Arts Club London have announced two solo exhibitions from Sarah Buckner and Wassef Boutros-Ghali; curated by Amelie von Wedel and Pernilla Holmes of Wedel Art and with special thanks to Leonie Mir, Lesley and Teymour Boutros-Ghali, and Esther Shipper Gallery. The exhibitions will be across the club’s Ante Room and Drawing Room from 22nd February – 29th April 2023.
Notably, this will be Cologne-based artist Sarah Buckner’s very first solo show in London. Buckner’s paintings boast a distinctive palette, fusing inspiration from real-life encounters with her imagination, resulting in distinctively dream-like, atmospheric scenes charged with emotional potency.
Dancing between the figurative and abstract, Buckner’s works explore the story-telling potential of painting. Narratives in her paintings are drawn from literature, film, fables, personal experiences or observations, with most recent inspiration sparked from the people and places visited during and after her studies under renowned figurative painter Peter Doig.
Installation view, Sarah Buckner at The Arts Club, London, UK, 2023. Photo by Kate Elliott.
Imbued with feelings and traces from travels through Morocco, Peru, Bolivia, Thailand, Italy and the U.S, Buckner’s paintings portray a spectrum of emotion, from anxiety, shame and confusion to playfulness and hope.
Buckner said “Over the years, I have developed my own personal palette, which of course continues to evolve. It's important to me to find the right tones to 'sing the song' I want to sing, so to speak.”
Sarah Buckner image credit: Nuda Nuda (2022), courtesy the artist and credit © Lothar Schnepf; Hermita (2022), courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper Gallery, photo © Sasa Fuis; cover photo (Madame De' rote Hose, 2022), courtesy the artist and photo © Michael Trier.
The Arts Club is also facilitating the first UK solo show from 99-year-old Egyptian painter Wassef Boutros-Ghali. Born 1924 in Cairo, Boutros–Ghali’s life and work have been shaped by political upheaval and military conflict, as well as his successful career as an architect. The show presents works from 2000-2012: a reflective period for the artist, where he absorbed architectural and modernist movements and socio-political events.
Boasting an art career spanning several decades, Boutros-Ghali’s artwork features abstract compositions inspired by the colours of unrelenting sunlight. Architectural forms emerge, collide and reengineer themselves without narrative, inspired by mythology, nuanced observations of daily life and imagined vistas that “relate to but could never work in real life”.
The artist explains: “My goal is simply to achieve an aesthetic visual equilibrium of geometric shapes and colours".
The Arts Club, 40 Dover Street, Mayfair, London, WIS 4NP
