Beirut - Written By Mansour Al-Habr
Jad Zeitouni's artistic achievements are characterized by the aesthetics of "confrontation", and by an artistic style that contains within it more than one expressive trend and more than one question. The artist approaches his painting with a sharp, spontaneous impulse, not preceded by preparation, at a calm pace. He begins without fear. He draws with color, and with color he erases what he draws tirelessly, from the beginning of the painting until it is completed.
Jad Zeitouni takes continuous risks and does not hesitate to use the dangerous green color. If we look closely, we come across the composition of the painting, which in turn is subject to shifts and changes that distance us from the prevailing view that composition is a fixed element in the painting.
A risk, or rather, continuous sabotage at the level of color, and an enticement to a rich spectrum of colors without falling into vulgarity. This illogicality in the casting of color is what most attracts us in Jad Zeitouni's works. It is not the talent represented in knowing the techniques and how to organize the surface of the work that draws our attention, but rather that hidden, ever-changing mood, and how to integrate it into the interior of the work.
Left hand
in a painting titled “Levitate”, the artist treats the left hand with a different logic or “mood” than he treats the right hand, and leans over the face of the seated man using the spatula technique, seeing him through the eyes of Dominique Ingres, and showing him through the eyes of Willem de Kooning, amidst violent color strikes that are a departure from the context and logic of the image.
Jad Zeitouni does not come to us as a student who follows a specific school of art, nor is he the guardian of the structure of an artistic movement that he is working to develop. The strange thing is that he does not adopt a post-modern approach, nor does he work against modernity, nor does he resort to ancient heritage art. He does not pay attention to all these names, because he refuses, it seems, to be the last of the romantics, or to be aligned with the expressionists.
The aesthetics of freedom
The concept of aesthetics in Jad Zeitouni's works is a free activity, anxious in thought. Freedom in the artist reveals emotions, imagination and intuition, and allows us to see the artist's dual nature between reason and sensitivity. The artist is good at combining modern art with ancient "classical" art, in a lively and special style.
He takes heritage and brings it into the circle of talk, creates it and proves it. He does not settle on a subject for a long time, as long as the subject is a mute "construction", unless the artist's hand takes it to touch it and is fascinated by it. We see him not spending long on a specific subject, anxious as if the wind beneath him directs it south or north. He may paint his face or the faces of friends, his father, or a group of paintings under the title "The Grass Cutter". We find a painting of his dog, of women and men, another by the artist Andy Warhol and the "Clown" group, Einstein, then Fairuz...
Jad Zeitouni, son of Qubaih, Lebanon, is an artist who has refined his artistic experience through diligent individual study. He believes that drawing is a talent that one must delve deeply into to uncover its secrets through a journey of self-discovery. He has had solo exhibitions at the "Klim Gallery" in Beirut, and recently had a solo exhibition at the "Saatchi Gallery" in London.
