Solo exhibition at ifa Galerie, Berlin (2020)

Mazen Kerbaj’s art deploys two tropes that are not uncommon in underground comics: autobiography and politics. An amalgamation of the personal and the historical. Yet his work extends beyond the panels of comics. It settles in space, and is performed through the political body of the artist. Mazen is not only a witness, but like his father, he is an actor.

This show combining new and old works, and put together in this formation for the first time, draws parallels in time, medium, and space. The pieces are placed in dialogue—an idea hastily scribbled on a restaurant’s placemat can be seen continued or developed in a live drawing video. It is like entering a room with a legion of Mazen Kerbajs talking, drawing, arguing, and drinking with each other. Each one of them is the record of a specific moment and a particular place; on a spectrum of sobriety; in a varying tongue; rendered in a different medium. Kerbaj is always on the move, and movement is both a condition of his work, and its subject. 

This show was curated by Hatem Imam

In the Presence/Absence of the Artist No.1: We Are the Blinded of Tomorrow.
This new site-specific installation occupies the heart of the show both physically and conceptually. A mise en abyme of sorts, it is the culmination of many of Kerbaj’s recurring motifs and strands of exploration; most of which can be found in other works orbiting it. Similarly to his other performances—especially live music—Kerbaj  bares his tricks of trade for all to see. Not only can we watch the entire recorded performance, but we can also witness its stage as though he has just left it. Nonetheless, the resulting moving images remain hauntingly spectral.

One Year
In his tradition of self-imposing onerous assignments, Kerbaj vows to make a drawing in his journal every single day of 2012. The pages of the book fleshed out on the wall conflate time and space. With a few steps the viewer can skim through months of the artist’s life. This work also exists in the form of a published book.

Notebook Series 5: Volume 1, 2 and 3
Kerbaj’s notebooks contain everything from whimsical doodles to dentists’ numbers, this is probably why he insists on not calling them sketchbooks. He went through different notebook formats that invariably affected the way he draws and the way he thinks about drawing. The accordion—the fifth format he started in 2019—unleashed him from the hegemony of single page ideas. His conceptions sprawl and linger as they please.

Learning Deutsch
2018 was another one of those ‘resolution’ years. The task of drawing daily is coupled with a new constraint: illustrating a new German word in the form of a self-portrait. Initiated shortly after Kerbaj’s move to Berlin, the collected drawings hide under a mask of lighthearted naivety the daunting emotional and cultural dislocation of emigration. 

My Cloud
Conceived at a 24-page in 24-hours comics jam. My cloud gives a glimpse to moments of discovery that evolve and mutate in Kerbaj’s career. Working with transparency to explore the mercurial quality of black ink, he sways between dreamy abstraction and poetic caricature.  We can trace the origin of this exploration in the live drawing project Wormholes (2009), accompanied by long time music collaborator Sharif Sehnaoui on guitar. While this show’s first edition of In the presence/absence of the artist can be seen as its extended development.

Antoine and The Arab Marseillaise
A semi-archival work based on the research Kebaj made around the discovery of his father’s play The Arab Marseillaise, and the subsequent graphic novel he started about it, of which three chapters have been published.

The Double Self-portrait and its Double
Kerbaj started collaborating with his mother, artist Laure Ghorayeb in the wake of the latest Israeli war on Lebanon in 2006. A recurring subject is the double self-portrait drawn with four hands. This latest version marks a moment at which their ages were also doubled—Mazen at 44 and Laure at 88.

Oil and Vinegar on Paper
Kerbaj is always armed with his drawing tools—you can almost never find him without at least his trusted thin black marker. Give him a surface and some free time and he will inevitably start drawing. This small selection from the past five years is composed of work done in restaurants and bars whose placemats, coasters, and menus were thus abducted.

Shop
Kerbaj’s collection of posters called Cheap Prints sums up his attitude towards the divide between high and low art. 

Typifying the irreverence of Kerbaj‟s practice, these works on paper -- all made since 2015, when he first relocated to Germany – have been drawn on whatever media were at hand – music festival programmes where the improv musician‟s performed, menus and cardboard coasters from restaurants and bars where he's imbibed. 
Suspended from the gallery ceiling, “We Are the Blinded of Tomorrow,” 2020, is an installation of nine videos that the artist made during a live drawing performance. The series title derives from the most figurative work, a sketch of a human eye that diffuses over 60 seconds. Kerbaj's creation of these nine works was itself filmed and the performance is also being shown in the gallery. The apparatus he uses for these performances - table, chair, overhead camera, ink, solvents, etc – is itself on show. 
[The Daily Star – Jim Quilty]

Einen prächtigen Überblick über sein Werk bietet die aktuelle Schau in der Galerie des Instituts für Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa), kuratiert von dem Künstler und Publizisten Hatem Imam, wie Kerbaj Mitte der 1970er-Jahre in Libanon geboren. „In der Anwesenheit/ Abwesenheit von Mazen Kerbaj" zeigt mit Zeichnungen, Installationen, Manuskripten und Filmen, in wie vielen Genres Kerbaj tätig ist. Es geht um Theater, Tusche und Klang, mal figürlich, mal abstrakt. Und wie in einem Comicladen liegen Kerbajs Bücher zum Blättern aus. Stunden lassen sich hier verbringen.
Aus der Opulenz sticht eine wandfüllende Sammlung von Kalenderblättern heraus: „Ein Jahr" (2012) mit 386 Zeichnungen belegt Kerbajs stilistische Vielfalt. Sie enthält Aquarelle, Karikaturen, Verballhornungen populärer Kunststile, grobe Comics, feine Graphic-Novel¬Art. Ganz hinten liegen Faksimiles von zwölf winzigen Heften aus („Deutsch lernen", 2018), in denen Kerbaj Tag für Tag notiert hat, welche Vokabel er gepaukt hat: „die Raumklimaanlage" etwa oder „das Rotkäppchen", als das er sich selbst porträtiert hat - unter der Kapuze eines roten Sweat-Shirts. In einem Leporello hat er dann die Planung dieser Ausstellung skizziert, inklusive seiner Freude über sie und seiner Selbstzweifel. Das macht die prächtige Schau auch noch höchst sympathisch.
[tip Berlin – Claudia Wahjudi]