“It is a matter of common experience that disorder will tend to increase if things are left to themselves... However, one can create order out of disorder.” -Stephen Hawking, The Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe

Artist’s Note: In Entropy by Ghazi Baker

After almost two years of meticulous unplanning, I proudly present In Entropy—a show that started as a concept, unraveled into chaos, and then politely declined to be put back together. These works are the byproduct of overthinking, under-sleeping, and a long-term relationship with the absurd. Each painting is a conversation I lost track of halfway through. Some are self-portraits, portraits or dyslexic architecture. Others are just mood swings with better posture. If you find meaning in them, congratulations—you’ve officially done more interpreting than I have. Viewers are encouraged to feel whatever is still functioning emotionally, and to remember that entropy isn’t just a concept—it’s also my studio floor. Enjoy responsibly. Or don’t. It’s already too late.

Artist Statement – In Entropy

Ghazi Baker This body of work began with a sincere question: how do we survive systems designed to fail beautifully? In Entropy is less about collapse and more about maintenance—specifically, the maintenance of illusions. Illusions of logic, of identity, of emotional coherence. Each painting in this series is an architectural rendering of dysfunction: bureaucratic signage wrapped in affection, structural drawings soaked in delusion, and portraits of people who may or may not be composited entirely from coping mechanisms. These are not abstractions of feeling. These are schematics of failure. We live in a time where the façade is sacred. Clean lines, curated color fields, perfect symmetry—these have replaced meaning. We no longer express; we brand. We don’t speak; we caption. We aren’t intimate; we align. So I gave you that: alignment. Grids, flags, charts, sections, palettes, systems. The kind of visual order that makes everything feel under control—until you look closer and realize none of it connects. The math doesn’t add up. The figures glitch. The plants are labeled but dying. The signage says “DO NOT FEED” and no one questions it.

And then there’s LOVE and LIFE—those two words that should carry the most weight, now reduced to branding assets. In this show, they appear as fractured typography, pixelated graphics, barely-legible declarations lost in the noise. LOVE is chopped, deconstructed, flattened into something you can sell but not feel. LIFE is rendered as a coded arrangement, a blocky system of shapes pretending to represent something universal. These aren’t emotions or experiences anymore—they’re data points, optimized slogans, placeholders for where real connection used to be. Each piece in this show is a minor act of sabotage. A refusal to let the system do what it’s supposed to. Or worse—letting it work exactly as intended and watching the entropy bloom from within.

There’s satire, sure. I find it hard to paint about reality without it. But beneath the sarcasm is something else: exhaustion, I suppose. And also curiosity. What happens to love when it’s forced to wear a design system? What does stability look like if it’s only skin deep? How many faces can a person wear before none of them fit? The works are composed because entropy doesn’t always scream. Sometimes it smiles, poses, and blends into the palette. Sometimes it’s pixelated. Sometimes it files a report and hangs a sign. Sometimes it paints itself, beautifully, just before everything stops working. This is that moment.

Artist Biography: Ghazi Baker

Ghazi Baker (1967) is a self-taught artist ,he is a practicing architect and manages his own firm, CC&A .Since his early teens, he has been learning and intellectualizing in a constant state of communion and renewal with the world around him. Born in Beirut in a multicultural family with Iranian and Armenian heritage, Baker was raised during the Civil War years. In his youth, he spent some time in Europe where he cultivated a love for art, travel and adventure. An avid photographer and passionate bike rider, his trips, rides and photography have always been a source of inspiration and self-awareness.

Currently working and living in Beirut, Baker’s style could be characterized as an exotic cocktail of lines, post-structuralist art, cerebral and deliberately anti-thematic. Always looking to highlight the process itself, his artistic influences include comic book art, music, movies, motorcycle culture, esoteric imagery, everyday life and the human condition. His work is inspired by thinkers as diverse as J. Derrida, M. Foucault and M. Merleau-Ponty, as well as other artists including Francis Bacon and David Salle . Baker’s work is highly sought after by many major collectors in the middle-east, Europe and elsewhere. His work is present in institutional and foundation collections in Beirut, Dubai, Paris, New York and other locations. He only recently had works at private auctions and easily exceeded set reserves for his work.