A Momentum for the Horizon

A Momentum for the Horizon is an Artist Room presentation of work by the Lebanese artist Alaa Itani at Gallery Isabelle in Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, from 23 September to 4 November 2026.

The presentation brings together reverse glass paintings of horizons, blurred landscapes and moving cloud formations. The gallery's page illustrates seven works, each titled A Momentum for the Horizon and dated 2023. Itani applies ink to the glass and then selectively wipes and erases areas of the painted surface. Light passes through the cleared areas and casts shadows that double the painted image. The gallery describes the series as "a visual meditation on the horizon as both boundary and promise, a visible line that remains perpetually distant."

Itani (b. 1996) is a visual artist, researcher and archivist based in Beirut, working across painting, drawing and printmaking. He holds a BFA in Plastic Arts from the Lebanese University (2022) and received the Boghossian Foundation Prize for Visual Arts in 2022. His residencies include the Cité internationale des arts, Paris, and Temporary Art Platform x Hospitalfield in Arbroath, Scotland. His work has been shown at the Beirut Museum of Art (BeMA), the Fondation Boghossian in Brussels and Galerie Tanit in Beirut.

Itani began the series in October 2023. The press release sets it in dialogue with the landscapes of the Lebanese painter Rafic Charaf (1932 to 2003). In the years around the onset of the Lebanese Civil War, Charaf painted landscapes recalling his native Bekaa from his studio in Beirut.