Art in General is pleased to present its first international New Commission, a new film installation by Lebanese artist Mounira Al Solh.

A series of scenes that seem both familiar yet brand new. A grouping of characters that seem to live in an eternal present conditioned by everlasting chaos and unrest. A set of locations marked by darkness and yet illuminated by the intensity of those that inhabit them. A narrative that instead of answering a specific question, is in itself a search for answers.

Mounira Al Solh’s new film installation, Dinosaurs, takes its inspiration from four different films by John Cassavetes. Culling vignettes from Opening Night, Faces, Husbands, and The Killing of A Chinese Bookie, Al Solh directs her friends to reenact specific scenes wherein the act of drinking reveals moments of intimacy, aggression, and loneliness. Invoking Cassavetes as both a means of study and a lens, Al Solh reflects on the relationship between substance and evaporation, exploring how alcohol can become instrumental in confronting fate. Dinosaurs’ fragmented scenes build a fragile portrait of a place in flux, a loose narrative that continues to unravel and unhinge with each drink. At once claustrophobic, circular and tense, Al Solh’s reinterpretation of Cassavetes creates a space of suspended chaos.

About the Artist

Mounira Al Solh was born in Beirut in 1978. She studied painting at the Lebanese University in Beirut (LB), and Fine Arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam (NL). Between 2006 and 2008, she was a resident at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. Al Solh’s New Commissions exhibition at Art in General is her first solo exhibition in New York. Her work will also be featured in The Ungovernables, The Second New Museum Triennial, opening in February 2012.

Images courtesy the artist. Mounira Al Solh. Dinosaurs, 2012.