The First Step Back

The First Step Back is a solo exhibition of paintings and sculpture by Raffi Tokatlian at Maya Art Space in Downtown Beirut, from 1 to 24 October 2026. The vernissage is on 1 October from 5pm to 8pm.

Tokatlian's work is rooted in the human figure. "In these paintings and sculptures, the human figure is never complete. It merges, disappears, struggles, dominates and is dominated," the gallery writes. "Human and animal occupy the same space, not as opposites, but as different forms of the same existence." Inspired by fifteenth-century painters and influenced by the Surrealists, he describes his style as "Surreal-Mythoclassical". According to the gallery, he has mastered lost-wax bronze casting and carries it out himself. The gallery's invitation quotes the artist: "My paintings and sculptures are not answers. They are questions about what we became, what we have lost, and what may still remain beneath everything we created. The road back is long. The first step back may be the beginning."

Raffi Tokatlian, born in 1957, is a Lebanese-Armenian sculptor and painter. He studied at the Fine Arts School in Beirut before moving to Paris in 1981. According to the gallery, his sculpture received First Prize at the Sursock Museum and the prize-winning work is held at MoMA Yerevan; he has exhibited at Palazzo Zenobio in Venice and has received four state and ministerial distinctions from the Republic of Armenia. The gallery also lists works in the collections of the Presidential Palace in Yerevan, the Museum of Marathon in Greece and the Sursock Museum.

The gallery notes that Tokatlian also writes philosophical texts and private stories, drawn in part from years spent living in the mountains, which share the concerns of his sculpture: "mortality, instinct, freedom, spiritual presence, human contradiction, and the fragile relationship between humanity and nature".