A Constant Flame

Saleh Barakat Gallery opens A Constant Flame, a solo exhibition by Jean Boghossian, on 6 October 2026. It runs until 13 November 2026 in the gallery's main space in the former Cinema Clemenceau.

Boghossian's work begins, as the gallery puts it, with "one of the humblest, simplest of actions, the spark of a flame, yet also one of the most important in human history." Since 2010 fire has been his central medium: he burns, scorches and singes paper, books, canvas and wood, letting chance and the physics of combustion shape the surface. He calls the process a "fire dance", and the gallery describes it as "a delicate search for balance within chaos".

The exhibition brings together painting, wood sculpture and ceramics. Oil, pigments, smoke, ashes, paper, wood, clay and acrylic are combined with folding and collage, and the flame is only part of the story: colour, texture, a volcanic eruption, a cedar and "the glitch in the machine" are all at play. His ceramics, a material he has explored for the last eight years, share a natural kinship with the flame and the kiln. Works previewed include Abstract Writings #20 (2021) and #72 (2023), smoke, pigments and acrylic on canvas, in which looping, calligraphic marks drift across smoky grounds.

Born in Aleppo in 1949 into a family of jewellers, Boghossian studied in Beirut before the civil war took him to Belgium in 1975. He represented Armenia at the Venice Biennale in 2017, and in the gallery's words his use of fire represents "both sides of life, and of humanity", humble and violent at once. A Constant Flame brings his work back to Beirut, the city where he studied before leaving for Belgium.