Chawki Youssef

Biography

Born 1973 in Beirut, Chawki Youssef has a BA in Drawing and Painting from the Lebanese University and a MA in Intercultural Mediation from St Joseph University in Lebanon. Alongside being a practising artist, he is also a university lecturer for the American University of Beirut AUB (2006 – present), Académie Libanaise de Beaux Arts, ALBA (2009 – present), and Lebanese American University of Beirut LAU (2013 – present). He has exhibited in Lisbon, Paris, Doha, Dubai and Beirut. His works can be found in the Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah, and in the Salsali Private Museum, Dubai.

Youssef’s practice extends across multiple media, including painting, drawing, video and installations, all in addition to his recent interest in painting and photography. His paintings continuously interrogate and deconstruct the mechanism of human thought. He is bewitched by the concept of matter, a physical substance allegedly distinct from the mind, spirit, and energy. Consequently, Youssef’s habitual and almost obsessive subject of the human body and the matter of factness explored is through painting, as the former dissolves or vanishes into marks and traces within multifarious compositions. Delicate lines, shades, and transparencies of colour interact with the white and textured surface of the canvas, evoking the ephemeral nature of matter’s existence.