The Running Horse

The Running Horse is happy to introduce The Running Talent Karen Kalou in her first solo exhibition The Rain Series. Kalou approaches this series with an impressionist's eye and tries to capture the transient effects of light and movement in Beirut's rainy landscapes.

Quite a seasonal modus operandi that Kalou uses to explore and deconstruct the paradoxes of life in Beirut and to raise such question as: The city, extreme and aggressive, can I make it seem less literal? Can I create dreamy landscapes out of harsh realities? Will I find open compositions? Or would I end up finding a lot more that I thought?

In 2008, just before moving back to Beirut, a friend and I were driving along the Jersey coast, just outside of New York City. The air was salty and warm. I picked up the camera and began to photograph the view of this remarkable, scenic road. I carefully emphasized the details of the setting, only to create painterly landscapes withing each fleeting frame. Industrial structures turned to mere breathing entities, the gloaming colors blending into one another, as a painter's brushstroke would be. The end result was not only personal, they were also visual sensations of color, light and form, and above all, a true reflection of my bittersweet last days.

Heavier drops of rain to create dreamier landscapes, Kalou got to know everything about the different raindrops and the effects she can create with them. Kalou is able to shape the type of landscape she would like to capture through her camera and produce: melancholic urban landscapes with rounded edges, great natural light that gleams through the grey high skies, sights that one would not expect to see in Beirut.

Not unknown aesthetic in painting; yet, where photography had inspired the impressionists with its accurate depiction of light effects and its changing qualities, Kalou use impressionism to depict the different aspects of Beirut and its inhabitants fusing together in her compositions, just as Renoir would have portrayed ever changing shadows dancing with the light and surroundings and people fusing together in one vibrant canvas.

It is a quenching change to see such photography that lets go of the restraining urban context and captures its through the passage of time. It really is about the rhythm of the city, the flow blended with the light of these new abstract Beirut brushstrokes.