The Grand Sofar Hotel – Art Exhibition by Tom Young

Description

LebanonPostcard presents the Album The Grand Sofar Hotel – An Art Exhibition by Tom Young – Softcover book, 27×26 cm, 72 pages.

Extract of the introduction: If one reads history in the form of tourism’s allure, one might believe that the history of the Grand Sofar Hotel is readily accessible, its memories of greatness, grandness and splendor still intact, ready for a wedding or a meeting of world leaders at a moment’s notice. But Tom Young’s architectural history and preservation projects have never been ready-made. In talking with Tom for this latest project up at Sofar, one moves through makeshift remodelling and meshing to make the place safe enough to have a show on the ground floor. In looking at Tom’s set of paintings for this exhibit, the feeling of living and working on site is critical for him.

The layering for the paintings, far more than in previous shows, not only shows the multiple textures of an iconic historical site that has been left unoccupied for years, but also Tom’s belief that Sofar needs to be reinstated to the history of Lebanon, and the capital city which it rises above; as such, he uses gesso glazes to convey the relentless concrete jungle Beirut has become whilst the hotel stands as a strong survivor, painted from life in textured paint. Extending this latter claim onto situating Young’s practice, his sense of a building’s legacy in the heart of neoliberal global governance, has shown cultural preservation sites to be on their last legs, the English idiom working off of the French language, not for a pair of legs but for what is left to us of a place’s culture, namely its legacy.

Tom Young’s oeuvre and continuing projects indicate that the history of buildings never escape time and its ravages, but are fully open to both remnant and drawn traces of histories consciously and unconsciously waiting a hearing. His feeling for a place is central in his research, his desire for lived stories of a place, his wide scope of subjects considered and, most importantly, his artistic ability to negotiate between those memories of a place that has become his studio goes beyond a mere lieu de mémoire which Pierre Nora anchored in symbolic import. As such, his exhibit serves as a metaphorical and vehicular switch point: a point at which the past transforms to a possible future. His paintings become an opening or closing of a circuit, given the import of train lines in this exhibit, or a flexible rendering used to move beyond romanticized and sentimental nostalgia of place.

Young’s paintings’ allure, tell us that return to a place is filled with a sense of aller, going, that is not defined by a certain beginning or end but a convergence of, at times claustrophobic, set of histories. This is not nostalgic in the English romantic sense but rather one opened to the return of pain. This emergence into histories of place is out of place with a capitalistic desire for the Grand Hotel. It suggests even when it approaches a place of liveliness, something otherwise, faded, reordered, or altogether different. It is in that sense that the exhibit at Sofar is both relevant in the sense of having consequence and showing the Grand Hotel to be elided and written over by its lived histories. It will not settle into tourist form.

LebanonPostcard will be responsible for sending the book you order, through a fast courier with a tracking number, guaranteeing reception of the package. The souvenirs may take three to five days to arrive, according to the country they are sent to.