Artbooth Gallery hosts solo show of Bruno Sfeir in national capital
- Last updated: June 22, 2025 | 10:03
Muhammad Yusuf, Features Writer
Artbooth Gallery, located in the UAE capital, has inaugurated The Return to Essence, a solo exhibition showcasing the works of artist Bruno Sfeir (May 29 – July 13). The show explores a journey through imagination, memory, and abstraction.
In the shifting lights of imagination and memory, Bruno Sfeir, a Lebanese-Uruguayan painter, is a singular voice in contemporary visual art — one whose work is perhaps as elusive as it is evocative. The artist gestures toward a body of work that resists piegonholing.
His paintings flow freely between movements, influences, and inner visions. Though trained under disciples of the renowned Torres García workshop, Bruno has diverged from the Constructivist grid toward a more fluid and intuitive terrain.
Geometry is present in his works, but it does not dictate creative terms and artistic conditions. Surrealist echoes also resound in the pieces, but never dominate. The compositions exist in a space of balance — a visual unity where rational structures intermingle with irrational forms, giving rise to an order that feels both intentional and instinctual.
His work emerges as a subtle dance between the visible and the intangible, a profound exploration of the inner sensations that nourish human consciousness. Bruno captures and attempts to materialise the essence of inner experience, transforming it into compositions that radiate balance and harmony, though such expression is indeed difficult.
Each stroke is an echo of his inner world, a window into a universe where order and serenity blend. His creative process is a journey in two directions: an immersion into his internal landscape and an interaction with the external world. Internally, his meditative practice, anchored in conscious respiration, sustains the creative dynamic. Externally, he imprints the canvas with the mark of his intuitions, each brushstroke reflecting the connection between his inner and outer worlds.
Bruno’s technical mastery and artistic training allow him to express himself with a refined, sophisticated, and subtle language. His distinctive voice has resonated across continents, leading to numerous exhibitions in international organisations like UNESCO in Paris, and cultural institutions such as the Museum of the Gaucho in Montevideo, the Renato Russo Cultural Center in Brasília, Borges Cultural Center in Buenos Aires, and the Cervantes Institute in Beirut.The Museum of the Gaucho, Montevideo, Uruguay, is dedicated to preserving and showcasing the country’s cultural and historical heritage. (“Gaucho” is a cowboy from the South American pampas). The Renato Russo Cultural Center is a cultural institution run by the Secretariat of Culture of the Federal District. It is a public cultural centre and agency located in Brazil’s capital, Brasilia, in the Federal District.
In the heart of the city of Buenos Aires is the Borges Cultural Center, an important cultural enterprise created by the Foundation for the Arts, a non-profit civil organisation. It was inaugurated in 1995 inside the Galerías Pacífico, a building from the close of the 19th century, declared a National Historical Monument. The Cervantes Institute was created in 1991 with the aim of promoting the teaching of the Spanish language and disseminating the culture of Spain and Spanish-speaking countries.
Each venue, like each canvas, becomes a point of passage for Bruno’s works — another place, where reality and imagination intertwine. Nowhere is this more evident than in his latest series, unveiled in the Abu Dhabi exhibition. Here, the Uruguayan countryside is reimagined — not as it is seen, but as it is felt. In Surreal Countryside Scene, a cow grazes in familiar fields, yet the proportions bend, the forms twist, and the scene is transformed into a mystery — an invitation to look again, and more deeply.
Similarly, Crossing the Countryside 1 presents a rider on horseback traversing a terrain where the very ground seems to pulse with peculiar shapes, destabilising the boundary between perception and dream. At the heart of Bruno’s work lies a desire not to reproduce reality, but to remake it — to create a coherence born not of fidelity to nature, but of fidelity to the painting itself. Each canvas becomes a living entity, evolving as it seeks its own truth. Speaking of his artistic process, he says: “My paintings may begin with the observation of a concrete reality, but as I paint, that reality moves and shifts according to the needs of the composition.”
It is this dynamic — the dialogue between order and invention — that gives his work its quiet, resonant power. His singular vision has not gone unnoticed. Over the years, he has received several distinctions, including an Honorable Mention at the National Salon for the 75th Anniversary of Teatro Maccio in San José, a recognition from the Bank of the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, and the Ministry of Tourism Award in Montevideo. The honours echo what his canvases already suggest: that here is an artist whose work transcends borders, geographical, stylistic, and perceptual. With this new collection, Bruno invites the viewer into a world where the boundaries between the real and the imagined dissolve like mist in open fields.
The creations are not mere landscapes: they are dreamscapes, shaped by a vision which flows like water, and whose voice is entirely Bruno’s own. Artbooth Gallery was founded by Roger El Khoury in 2019; it is dedicated to fostering cross-cultural artistic dialogue through a programme of exhibitions. With locations in Abu Dhabi and Seoul, it is a platform for both emerging and established artists, promoting innovative art from around the world, designed to provoke critical thought.