The Color of Air

Mark Bettis gallery announces a new art show featuring Asheville artist Nabil El Jaouhari, beginning on June 8, 2024, at Bettis’ River Arts Gallery. This new collection of work by Nabil El Jaouhari consists of paintings and 3D work using air’s elemental, emotional and conceptual nature. The exhibit explores the extensive and intensive limits of the force through its various forms. It relies on the literal forms air takes, from the calm to the violent, to inform the physical presence of the pieces. Using wood burning, collage, and air brush, Nabil creates abstract images on back-lit, frame-less pieces. As a result, the pieces have a floating physical presence imitating air.

Nabil describes his show as “the metaphorical and emotional connotations of air that are present, the calm of a warm breeze, the violence of a storm, the winds of change; these temporary and un-graspable shapes form from the always present substance that surrounds us. Only when it is condensed and abstracted from the totality are we reminded that air is always there.”

“The Color of Air” exhibition will run from June 8th, 2024, through June 22nd, 2024 at the Mark Bettis Gallery located at 123 Roberts Street, Asheville, NC. The gallery will be hosting an opening night reception on Saturday June 8th from 5:30 – 7:30pm. The reception is free and open to the public; refreshments will be served. All works will be available for purchase.

Originally from Lebanon, Nabil studied fine arts at the Lebanese University in Beirut before moving to the United States in 2009 to complete his MFA in painting and printmaking at the University of Missouri.