The Hearth

Time itself becomes pliant in the hands of Simone Fattal, who has spent six decades forging a singular project to bridge the ancient and modern. This joint presentation spans two linked exhibitions — The Primeval Forest, at Greene Naftali, and The Hearth, at kaufmann repetto — and marks the artist's return to New York following her acclaimed 2019 survey at MoMA PS1. The works on view range from sculptures in clay, stoneware, and bronze to large-scale drawings and cut-paper collage, implying a ritual landscape suffused with belief in what can't be seen. Born in Damascus in 1942, Fattal was raised in Lebanon and educated in Beirut and Paris, where she studied archaeology at the École du Louvre and philosophy at the Sorbonne. Known primarily as a sculptor of totemic works in clay and bronze, Fattal makes use of motifs that imply a cultural mix—from Sumerian tales to Sufi mysticism and pre-Islamic lore—that mirrors her own itinerant life, tapping into shared narratives of displacement and human resilience. The exhibition features an array of tabletop ceramics that pay homage to the natural world, with glazed vignettes of plants and animals, alongside clay structures resembling humble dwellings or architectural ruins. These rough-hewn objects portray elemental forces and our means of shelter from them: the fundamental drive to make a home, to preserve what might otherwise be lost.