Caline Aoun (b 1983, Beirut) is a visual artist whose work engages issues related to urbanism, architecture, print and digital advertising space. Aoun invites the audience to consider and question a set of elements that open up to larger notions of over-consumerism, excess and saturation.
In Fields of Space, Aoun makes use of the Beirut port’s objects – shipping container floors, ledgers, industrial shipping palettes – and data to reimagine the ways in which we envision and interact with space and the materiality around us. Mundane elements that are normally overlooked become objects to gaze at. Aoun manipulates information and disrupts the common constructed reading of familiar objects, assigning new values to what otherwise would simply fade in the urban panorama.
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Caline AounPalettes 2(a), 2016Inkjet print on Hahnemühle Fine Art Baryta paper 32572 x 102 cm (framed)Edition of 3 plus 1 artist's proofCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist -
Caline AounPalettes 2(b), 2016Inkjet print on Hahnemühle Fine Art Baryta paper 32572 x 102 cm (framed)Edition of 2Courtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Caline AounPalettes 2(c), 2016Inkjet print on Hahnemühle Fine Art Baryta paper 325
72 x 102 cm (framed)Edition of 2 plus 1 artist's proofCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist -
Caline AounPalettes 2(d), 2016Inkjet print on Hahnemühle Fine Art Baryta paper 325
72 x 102 cm (framed)Edition of 2 plus 1 artist's proofCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist -
Caline AounDatascape , 2016Inkjet print on Heritage Rag paperSeries of A4 (price is per A4)Edition of 2 plus 1 artist's proofCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Caline Aoun2 series from Datascape: Iron and Steel & Onions (2005, 2006, 2007), 2016Inkjet print on Heritage Rag paper38.5 x 50.6 cm (framed)Edition of 3Courtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Caline AounSeascape, 201624h live streaming videoCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Caline AounShipping Container Floor , 2016Carbon paper cast234 x 590 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Caline AounSilver Scratch, 2016Silver scratch inkDimensions variableCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
In Datascape, the total weight per month of imported and exported goods from 2004 until 2015 is put together in the form of graphs. Data however becomes irrelevant as it makes way for dreamy abstract landscapes that occupy an entire wall. Information that bears heaviness becomes an intangible and airy topographical representation of commercial exchanges and consumption. Each A3 graph represents the weight in tons per month of a given product for a given year. Thus each horizontal series of 13 graphs illustrates the total imported and exported weight of a certain product throughout the years.
In Silver Scratch, an entire wall of the gallery is covered with silver scratch ink. The viewer is invited to scratch the surface, which will then reveal the actual wall. This impromptu scratching gesture will allow for a potential landscape, shaped by the flux of people interacting with the installation and gaining awareness of the space that surrounds them.
Seascape is a 24h live streaming video of the sea shot from a shore overlooking the comings and goings of shipping boats. The video records not only the continuous movement of traffic of goods but also the constant rhythm of waves, both disturbed by the pixilation of the image and/or Internet connection failure. Moving the outdoor scenery to the private space of the gallery, the video is inevitably reminiscent of the privatization and gentrification of Lebanese seashores.
In Shipping Container Floor, the very floor of a shipping container is cast in carbon paper pulp. Usually carrying a considerable weight, it loses its function and becomes a fragile surface.
In Palettes 2, shipping palettes are photographed from a train platform, creating a symmetry between the body of the photographer and the subject being photographed; each an object in transit, each subject to the flow of economic streams. The image speaks not so much of urban infrastructure, but of the latent physical processes of economic exchange. The porous building-like forms also bring to mind the many half-finished buildings of Beirut – relics of a building boom that was frozen by war – reminding us that a moment of flux can take on a sense of permanence only if the economic flow that powers it stalls.
b. 1983, Beirut, Lebanon / Lives and works in Beirut
Aoun’s work involves reduced experimental correctives, inversions, and resting places in a historical moment of technological advancements . By addressing the changeability and the undercurrents of the hidden material and physical world, Aoun shows how inseparably real and virtual worlds are actually linked. In her work, Aoun encapsulates these hidden events by revealing how the continuous accumulation of matter can essentially change what we see and make it possible to sensually grasp otherwise intangible connections.
Aoun graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design, London, UK in 2005. She received a Postgraduate diploma in Fine Art from the Royal Academy Schools, London, UK in 2009 and earned a Professional Doctorate in Fine Art at the University of East London, London, UK in 2012.
Her works have been recently exhibited at Art|Basel Paris +, Paris, France, Villa Empain Boghossian Foundation, Brussels, Belgium, Greynoise, Dubai, UAE, PalaisPopulaire, Berlin, Germany, Sharjah Biennial 14, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, MAXXI, Rome, Italy, Marfa’, Beirut, Lebanon, Centre For Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland, Mosaic Rooms, London, United Kingdom, Casa Árabe, Madrid and Cordoba, Spain.
Caline Aoun was Deutsche Bank’s Artist of the Year 2018.
Her work is part of the collections of MFAH (Museum of Fine Arts Houston), Maxxi (Rome) and Deutsche Bank (Berlin)
