Bashir Qunqar : Born (1980), a self-taught artist currently working and living in Bad Goisern / Austria. He received his education in Heidenheim in Germany. When Bashir was 8 years old he experienced the loss of his father who got killed in the first Intifada, an experience which had left a deep impacted on his person and on his way of thinking. Bashir concentrate in his works mainly on the social aspects and interactions, trying to understand and to reflect the human behaviors, he also focuses on the taboos and the collective behaviors of the societies; this made his method full of criticism and sarcasm at the same time. Bashir is working currently as a freelance artist and also as a Social Pedagogic in Austria. He participated in several exhibitions and workshops on both local and the international level.
Exhibitions:
Solo Exhibitions:
2019: The Free Fall/ the Last Episode / Deutschvilla/ Strobl/ Salzburg/ Austria
2018: Blurred Memory Project: Bab IdDeir Art Gallery/ Bethlehem/ Palestine
2017: KaeshmaeshKulturVerein Vienna: Free Fall Episode II / Austria Vienna.
2017: SchlossSpindelhof Regensburg: Gehäuft- Piles of everything/ Regensburg Germany.
2017: Al Sakakini culture Center Ramallah: Free Fall / Ramallah Palestine.
2017: Al Ma’mal Foundation for Contemporary Art Jerusalem: Free Fall / Jerusalem Palestine.
2013: Open Atelier Exhibition in Beit Jala: Another State of Mind / Beit Jala Palestine.
2008: Faces / Al kahf Gallery / Dar Annadwa Bethlehem.
2005: Altes Rathaus, Nordhausen: zurück in die Gegenwart / Nordhause Germany.
Collective Exhibitions:
2019: Collective exhibition in the Walled off Hotel / Banksy Gallery/ Bethlehem
2018: Kulturhaus Villa Zanders: Curated by Georg Beck/ Bergisch Gladbach /Germany
2017: Gallery one Ramallah: Representation- on Women and Revolution / Ramallah Palestine.
2017 : Bab idDeir Art Gallery Bethlehem / More and More of Bethlehem exhibition.
2017-2018 Al Qattan Foundation Ramallah / A Site of Disjunction / a touring exhibition in Haifa, Nazareth,Ramallah and Jerusalem.
2017: The Art Court Yard / Al Hosh Jerusalem: Letters from Jerusalem/ Jerusalem Palestine.
2017: Gallery Huber und treff Jena: Open Air symposium exhibition 2017/ Jena Germany.
2015: the gift / Al Ma’mal foundation for contemporary Art / Jerusalem.
2014 the European Plainer symposium in Beit Jala.
2013-2015 Touring exhibition in Sweeden, Currated by Inger Janson (12 exhibitions)
2013 UNESCO Vienna, Austria / ART CAMP ANDORRA.
2013 UNESCO Venice, Italy (Venice Biennale) / ART CAMP ANDORRA.
2013 UNESCO Paris, France / ART CAMP ANDORRA.
2013 Rock No War/ Verona Italy.
2011 – 2013 Museum Westminster/ Minneapolis USA.
Upcoming exhibitions 2019 :
July 2019 Collective Exhibition Deutschvilla in Strobel/ Austria
November 2019 Solo Exhibition at the Tachiles Gallery in Gmunden/ Austria
The Free Fall Project / Episode III
Free Fall / A Space impossible to be explained.
In the Free Fall, the place is liberated from ist geographical properties, becoming a transparent reflection of our essence. The place is a mirror, there is no escape from oneself.
The Free Fall is also an attempt to iliostrait the absurd, and to present the schizophrenia of the place and the socity’s morals.
The Free Fall is a colorful provocation; it aims to preserve the beauty and delight of the colors and to show a contrast to the content of the paintings.
The Free Fall is a brutal acknowledgement of the ghostliness of the reality; it awakes our awareness to the place which is drowning in nostalgia. It is also an optical suggestion, referring to a city that chases after, and swallows man, or rejects him and sends him into internal exile.
Bashir Qonqar
Bergisch Gladbach 2018
Piles of everything: 2017 Schloss Spindelhof Regensburg / Germany
The start of the pile project was in 2014 – during the last war on Gaza-, as I wasn’t able to understand the big mass of destruction that happened on the infrastructure of the cities.
As a result I started sketching and painting buildings.
In the beginning I’ve painted the destruction, after wards and unconsciously I’ve started painting more buildings in piles, painting what I think I see, everything became a gathering of objects, piles of buildings, people, animals, shoes, etc…
The work evolved afterwards from my surrounding to the universal image of what is happening all over. The people’s behavioris becoming more disturbed, the basic needs for a life in dignity are missing and violence became a normal every day TV show.
It made me realized how Schizophrenic and chaotic is our reality.
Bashir Qonqar
Humans vs. Animals
The idea of this series started in the year 2013 and it was a continuation of the project another state of mind “in which I have started questioning my place and society within”. This Idea have evolved as the civil war in Syria started, which showed a huge amount of brutality of the humans, and also as a reflection of my own reality as a Palestinian living in an occupied country. “One day I saw some images on facebook showing a group of young people hitting and torturing a Donkey on a very brutal way, some other people around them started screaming at them to stop, others were laughing which have created a surrealist Schizophrenic scene that left me speechless about the cruelty of Humans, in the end they have tided the donkey to an old Pickup truck and dragged it away. These pictures made me wonder who the animal is and who is the human?”
The Human vs. Animals project is only a try to reflect my thoughts about specific human behaviors which shows the carelessness, the greedy and brutality of the Humans by creating surrealist dialogue and interactions reflecting an absurd reality.
Project: Blurred Memory
Bashir Qonqar’sBlurred Memoriespresents a new body of work encompassing paintings and a video pieceinspired by memories of another time and the pulsating imprint of these memories upon water surfaces and reflections. (………)
Qonqar has time-travelled back to over a decade ago – to atime when he lived and travelled inside Europe. He reflects back to his walks in the parks of Germany and Austria – and remembers the beauty of the landscape and it’s still reflecting waters, returning with these memories to his studio in order to impart, with carefully studied gestures and deeply imbued emotions, visions of another time and place. (………)
Qonqar’s works invite us to embark on a journey permeating in pulsating energy- quiet and raging, controlled and unbound, deliberate and instinctive. An energy that dances to ideas of remembering and forgetfulness, to the openness and to the restrictive grounds of being. Unlocked in Blurred Memories is the desire to return to a time where we are greeted with the harmony of surrounding; where even in blurred visions, we still recognize our fingers touching the last that has gone before and the first of what is still to come
Jumana Emil Abboud
