Beyond the Cosmos

BEYOND THE

COSMOS FAYEZ BARAKAT

FAYEZ BARAKAT

BEYOND THE COSMOS

INTRODUCTION

Fayez Barakat is best known for being one the world’s most important collectors and dealers of ancient art. Filled with pieces from every age and culture, his galleries around the world are precious treasures to behold and admire. They are a unique, timeless gift to this fast-moving contemporary world.

Even though his involvement with art started at an early age in Jerusalem, Fayez Barakat - the artist - is unknown to the world until now. He kept his paintings in secret for many years, only family and a few fellow painters have seen his work. Throughout his entire career, his extensive knowledge and involvement with antiques, art, history and culture has shaped his artistic practice into what we can see, feel and appreciate today.

It’s a privilege to be in the presence of his paintings. They are so powerful that they take the viewer into a journey of observation and meditation beyond imagination. The viewer is transported across a journey of subconscious connection to beauty through Barakat’s powerful textures and vibrant colours. They become the path to conscious emotion through the admiration of abstract art. His work is a connection between his various passions and his inner emotions.

If you ever have the opportunity to meet him, you’ll immediately notice he is a passionate ARTIST who feels deeply for life. He expresses himself with such contagious passion and effervescent spirit. It’s inevitable to not feel the same when you see his paintings as they are a true reflection of his soul. He seeks to share his path of creation and deepest sensations with the world. “I transcend to another dimension when I paint, and I hope that the viewer trances to a blissful state of mind when observing my paintings.”

He is an insatiable, even obsessed painter. He works like a sleepwalker throughout the night, painting, being absorbed by his subconscious thoughts and creative process. “My works are a result of deep meditation that sometimes takes me out of my body, exploring dimensions, different textures and colours. A liberating process of creation, through reflection, contemplation, love and passion, I approach each painting with the images I foresaw.” Only a true creative spirit can find these extraordinary words to describe what is not easily understood but truly felt: the transformation of his soul into the creation of his art.

It is inevitable to not think of a great creative force when we think of Fayez Barakat - A man who’s been surrounded by inspirational culture and art his entire life. A man who showed passion and talent for painting from a young age, but talents lay dormant as he journeyed across an international frontier with his unprecedented ancient art galleries. Now, all of that energy is coming out through his paintings; they are the creative consequence of a life filled with art in every sense. In a recent interview, he spoke about these inner energies driving him to become the “medium” for the creation of his paintings. He talked about his feeling of being obsessed, if not “possessed,” by the need to paint every day.

Fayez Barakat has been fascinated with cosmology from a young age. In his series, “Beyond the Cosmos”, he visualizes what cannot be seen - the structure of atoms and the flow of energy which make up the universe around us. Throughout this series we see the influence of Fayez’s sensitive understanding of the stars and the cosmos on his artistic practice. Implementing a pointillist technique, millions of individually painted dots make up each work, portraying the universe as a complex system in which each minute element plays a significant role in formulating an entity. Articulated with such care, precision and consideration, the millions of painted dots in these works create orderly and divine systems; the opposite of chaos. The stunning visuals and unique artistic technique displayed in these paintings give flight to the imagination - from observing just one work closely, one can envision a constellation of stars and planets, or a comet swirling in the night sky.

ARTIST STATEMENT

‘Beyond the Cosmos’ embodies the idea that the universe is made up of billions of unmeasurable stars, galaxies, planets, and the quantum field, all working in combination to create the world and the cosmos that we see around us. As an artist with a vivid imagination, seeing incredible photographs published by NASA of space as observed through telescopes makes me wonder what lies beyond these images; I hope that one day we will be able to expand our knowledge even further. I painted this series before the images from the James Webb Space Telescope were released, but there is a striking similarity between my work and the sights of the galaxy that are now available to us because of this new technology.

Each one of my works is a DNA impression of a sensation, a speculation, a contemplation, or a dream, that I visualise through the process of meditation and then express on canvas. For me, no art can be totally abstract because everything that I see, even in my mind, must exist somewhere in the cosmos. I often find myself spellbound in wonder at the majesty of the universe, transfixed by the work of the Creator.

These paintings draw in the viewer and encourage them to consider the minute details, reflecting the way in which every atom plays its part in forming our familiar planet and what lies beyond. Observing them invites us to wonder at the marvels present in our everyday lives, and how they are constructed by forces which are invisible to us.

Fayez Barakat

BEYOND THE COSMOS

VOLUME THREE

Beyond The Cosmos · Vol. 3

Acrylic on canvas

LOS ANGELES · LONDON · SEOUL