An Article by F. A. (1272 words, 7 min. read)
Inside of Outside | Art on 56th Gallery, Beirut | October 2026
When Walls Become Paintings:
There is something deeply moving about the way Sara Chaar looks at the world around her. A cracked wall, a peeling surface, a fragment of an old building can become the beginning of an entire painting.
In her exhibition Inside of Outside, presented at Art on 56th Gallery throughout October, the Lebanese artist transforms the worn surfaces of Beirut into large-scale abstract compositions filled with colour, movement and emotion. Her paintings seem to have lived several lives, each one leaving its marks upon the next. Looking closely, the eye discovers an extraordinary richness of textures, delicate passages of color and unexpected openings that invite the imagination to travel beyond the canvas.
The Art of Building and Revealing
Chaar has developed a fascinating technique combining oil paint and cold wax, two materials whose interaction gives her paintings their particular character. Working on generously sized canvases, she applies successive layers of color, allowing them to settle before scraping, scratching and working the surface again. With palette knives and other tools, she removes portions of paint, exposes earlier colors and introduces fresh ones. Every intervention changes the composition, sometimes revealing an unexpected harmony that seems to have been waiting beneath the surface.
The cold wax gives the oil paint a beautiful, almost velvety quality. It allows Chaar to create subtle variations between opaque and translucent passages, smooth areas and rougher textures. The resulting surfaces possess a remarkable visual depth. Some sections appear almost mineral, resembling weathered stone or eroded plaster, while others have the softness of fabric or the delicacy of skin.
What we find particularly interesting is the relationship between the physical effort involved in creating these works and the sensitivity of their final appearance. There is strength in the way Chaar attacks the surface, followed by an extraordinary tenderness in the colors she allows to emerge.
Light Finding Its Way Through Color
One of the most beautiful aspects of this exhibition is its luminosity. Despite the density of the materials and the complexity of the layered compositions, the paintings retain an astonishing brightness.
Chaar’s palette moves between soft pinks, earthy greens, pale blues, warm beige and sudden bursts of red, orange or magenta. In one composition, a large expanse of green surrounds a vertical passage of delicate pink, crossed by fine dark lines. The colors seem to flow into one another, creating an atmosphere that recalls both a landscape and a fleeting human silhouette. The eye travels through the painting, discovering different possibilities with every glance.
Elsewhere, a powerful blue dominates the upper section of a canvas, spreading across a field of pale pinks and warm neutrals. Its intensity gives the composition a dramatic quality, while the surrounding lighter areas bring a sense of calm. In another painting, deep blue-green tones are interrupted by luminous coral fragments and fine white lines that cross the surface like delicate threads.
Her reds are equally fascinating. A composition dominated by warm crimson and pink is animated by touches of vivid yellow and dark scratched markings. The colours appear to rise from different depths, creating a sensation of warmth and movement.
The beauty of these paintings lies partly in the freedom of their colors. Chaar allows unexpected combinations to coexist, and the resulting harmonies feel wonderfully spontaneous.
The City Beneath the Skin
The starting point of this series is Beirut, a city whose walls have accumulated decades of human experience. Chaar photographs cracked façades and deteriorating surfaces, selecting fragments that interest her for their forms and textures. These details become the foundation of her abstract vocabulary.
There is something particularly touching about this approach. Beirut’s walls have witnessed generations of inhabitants, moments of happiness, periods of violence, destruction and reconstruction. Layers of paint have covered older ones, while time has gradually exposed what once lay underneath.
Chaar translates this process into her artistic language. The canvas becomes a place where different moments coexist. A line scratched into the paint may resemble a crack in an old building, while a translucent patch of colour suggests something resurfacing from a distant past.
Yet these paintings also invite a more intimate interpretation. Certain passages resemble veins, scars or fragments of the human body. Others suggest aerial landscapes, rivers crossing territories or imaginary maps.
The relationship between the city and the body becomes particularly compelling. Both accumulate marks throughout their existence. Both change with time. Both preserve something of their history within their surfaces.
Chaar explores this connection with great sensitivity, allowing the viewer to move freely between architectural, geographical and human associations.
The Beauty of What Lies Beneath
The concept of the palimpsest is central to Inside of Outside. Traditionally, a palimpsest is a surface that has been written upon, erased and used again, while traces of its earlier inscriptions remain.
In Chaar’s paintings, this idea takes on a physical and emotional dimension. Each new layer interacts with those beneath it. A color applied at the beginning may reappear much later through a scratch or an opening. A shape that once dominated the composition may become a subtle fragment within a larger arrangement.
We are especially drawn to these small discoveries. A thin black line crossing a pale surface, a glimpse of orange beneath a field of green, a soft pink area surrounded by rough textures. Such details give the paintings their individuality. They encourage a closer look and reward the time spent observing them.
There is also a beautiful element of unpredictability in this technique. Oil and cold wax respond to the artist’s tools in different ways, and the act of scraping can produce surprising results. Chaar seems to understand when to intervene and when to allow the material to participate in the creation.
This balance between intention and discovery gives her compositions their vitality.
The Freedom of Large-Scale Abstraction
The generous dimensions of the canvases contribute significantly to their emotional impact. Chaar uses scale to create a physical relationship with the viewer. Standing before these paintings, the eye can explore wide expanses of color before moving toward the smallest scratches and marks.
Her compositions alternate between densely worked areas and quieter passages where the colors seem to breathe. Some paintings are animated by sweeping movements and strong contrasts, while others develop through delicate transitions and almost imperceptible changes in tone.
This variety reveals an artist who is increasingly confident in her abstract language. Her paintings combine technical knowledge with an intuitive understanding of colour, rhythm and proportion.
Born in Miami and currently based in France, Chaar has exhibited internationally, with works included in private and public collections, among them the Arab World Institute in Paris. Her connection to Beirut remains an important source of artistic inspiration, expressed through a language that reaches beyond geographical boundaries.
An Emotional Geography
Perhaps the most touching quality of Inside of Outside is the way it brings together the physical and the emotional. The paintings originate in something tangible, the walls of a city, and gradually develop into compositions that speak to individual experience.
Chaar’s art allows all these emotions to inhabit the same canvas, just as different experiences coexist within a human life.
There is a particular beauty in the way she works with surfaces that have already undergone transformation.
And perhaps this is what makes the exhibition so compelling. Every painting offers a new discovery, every layer reveals another detail, and every detail invites a personal interpretation. Sara Chaar reminds us how much beauty can be found in the things that time has touched, altered and transformed.
