Ziad Dalloul is one of Syria’s most established artists. Based in Paris since the early 1980s, his work comprises paintings, etchings, and artist books. Using subjects and objects from nature, he renders the reflections of memory in order to question nature as a philosophical approach, which aspires to open paths between the inside and the outside, the visible and the invisible, what is seen and what is imagined.

"Painting a landscape on one's canvas is not an end-in-itself, says Ziad Dalloul. You have to step into the landscape to see it from the inside, deconstruct it in order to reconstruct it in accordance with our fantasies and memory which is inseparable from the representation of any work of art.

Based on a pantheist concept of painting, where nature is everything, Dalloul rejects the <Nature morte> [<Still life>, or literally <Dead Nature>] Instead he prefers the expression <Nature silencieuse> [<Silent nature>]  taken from the Arabic. Silent like the objects laid out in this studio right in the centre of the city, yet treated as a garden. No logs in the fireplace, but climbing plants spreading out across the walls. Squash, pomegranate and nuts scattered on the tables are to be found on the canvas in the form of hatchings or patches of color.

<Things at rest> [<Le repos des choses>] explains the master of the house.

Ziad Dalloul arranges nature so as to render it accessible to nostalgic dreamers who yearn for a planet unspoilt by man."

- Excerpt from 'Things at Rest' by Vénus Khoury-Ghata
Ziad Dalloul - Célébration des absents, published by Galerie Claude Bernard, 2015