9 - 15 May 2002
Issue No.585
|
Al-Ahram Weekly Online 9 - 15 May 2002 Issue No.585 |
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
Different strokes
Vibrant then muted: Nigel Ryan crosses the street
There are a lot of pyramids in Mustafa Abdel- Moity's exhibition at the Zamalek Art Gallery, though this is not as stick-in-the-mud as it may sound. Indeed, I rather liked their presence: some had whimsical objects perched on their apex, others balance precariously on equally whimsical shapes. They come in a variety of combinations though naturally the most common configuration is a cluster of three. They are engaging in their non-monumentality, as indeed are many of the paintings they occupy.
Abdel-Moity deals in an odd kind of geometry, a geometry that allows for a certain porosity. There is fraying around the edges, even in the most architectonic of the works included in the current show. Shapes may be floating in space, but the space is ambiguous and so, too, on closer inspection, are the shapes. It is a trick of the light, a sleight of hand achieved through chromatic saturation that lends an initial impression of solidity, of a kind of straight-edged thereness: look twice, though, and the edges are not quite as straight as they would seem. And somewhere, lurking in the background, will be another shape, perhaps even another pyramid, with the same geometric schema providing an outline, but one that is patently transparent. Fields of what should be background colour will penetrate the supposedly solid form, rendering it not just transparent but insubstantial.
Backgrounds are subjected to a similar conjuring. The intimation of space may be by the most economic means -- darkness, inky blacks or midnight blue -- but it suggests less the vastness of the sky, or of what lies beyond, than the enclosure behind the proscenium. Indeed several of these paintings look like notes towards stage sets and it seems a pity that the artist has had no opportunities to try his hand in this direction. Demarcation undoubtedly has its rules, no doubt jealously guarded, and few are the productions locally that pay anything but the most cursory attention to staging, all of which is an enormous pity.
The painterly jiggery-pokery that is applied to geometric forms is also apparent in the treatment of backgrounds. Suddenly the contained but still mysterious space is interrupted by an area of flat, regular stripes. It makes of any reading of space a difficult manoeuvre for nothing is quite as it seems.
Nazli Madkour, Mustafa Abdel-Moity
These works demand close scrutiny, and on a formal level which is, I suspect, a habit most viewers of contemporary art have not had much opportunity to develop. They reveal intentions only slowly.
There are any number of starting points that can be identified, though they require at least a working knowledge of the development of European modernism. And because Abdel-Moity is, among other things, in the business of quietly commenting on, and in doing so subverting, the more ambitious modernist ploys, it is necessary to make a few comparisons, mentally at least. Malevich, Leger, Rayonnism, Miro, many of the Constructivists -- they might provide a starting point. One should consider, too, that there is a self-conscious playfulness at work here: this is abstraction in one of its better humours. These paintings often elicit a smile, which is no bad thing, though those with a predilection to Swoon-before-Art are unlikely to enjoy them. Not quite architectonic shapes float in unreadable space.
Some of the pyramids boast psychedelic snails, or primary coloured ammonites curled into tight little spirals. A fractured planet occasionally illuminates the inky depths across which boat-like shapes sail in no particular direction, if indeed they are boat-like shapes. It is confusing, rather wonderfully so, an upside down, inside out introduction to a genre all too often thought of as dry, absolutist, non- negotiable. This is not usually my sort of thing but these large, seemingly flat expanses of acrylic paint -- in one of the smaller works on view the surface has been articulated by the pasting on of newsprint, an odd exception -- found me leaving the gallery with a lighter heart than when I arrived. It is impossible not to admire serious painting that makes you smile.
Across the road from the Zamalek Art Gallery is Safar Khan where, until 25 May, Nazli Madkour is exhibiting works from several years under the collective title Nostalgia. It is not a particularly enticing title: it suggests something a little too sepia, or viewed through glasses a little too rose-tinted, for its own good. And there is no real reason why it should have been applied to the selection of works included in the current offering, which consists largely of still-life drawings, portrait sketches, or larger painted landscapes.
Still, nostalgia appears to have been flavour of the month for some time now. The drawings, charcoal, pastel -- some appeared to have a hint of wash though this may well be just an impression made by even smudging -- are mostly restricted to the first floor gallery of the tiny space, save for two (presumed) self-portraits of the artist at work. They are all small-scale and somewhat repetitive: there are coffee pots, clay pots, table-top arrangements, bowls of onions, and arrangements of dried flowers. (Or at least they appear to be dried, though imbuing life into her subjects is not really this artist's forte.)
Depending on your point of view it is either very brave, or remarkably foolhardy for Madkour to have decided to show the public these drawings. They are not particularly good; are, indeed, mostly very ordinary. Some betray a degree of observation, yet others the development of strategies to disguise shortcomings in draftsmanship, the latter appearing to negate the entire enterprise. The portraits, apart from those one might assume are self- , are of women, some just head and shoulders, others full-figure studies. They are all of peasant women, in peasant dress, something that, taken with the title, lends the who show a whiff of the Marie Antoinettes. When the portraits focus on the head the features tend to be schematised in a manner that allows for little individuation; when they are full-length the concentration is on the mass of the body with the head cast into convenient shade.
The landscapes adopt a similar reveal/conceal approach. There are stratagems to be identified -- most annoyingly the foregrounding of palm trees, identifiable as such because of the feathery smudging of fronds. And there are seemingly particular elements to each of the landscapes, particular shapes indenting horizons, but never quite enough in focus for them to be believable as real aspects of real places. Surfaces are textured with layers of encaustic and, in some places what appears to be the incorporation of sand. The palette, apart from the occasional intrusion of acid green, tends towards the muted, the browns and ochres that define the desert. The most successful of these scenes is a kind of nightmare pastoral, details luridly illuminated, as if by lightening flash. Otherwise they fail, almost consistently so, to escape the straightjacketing of the tasteful, the muted, the indefinite, the half- hearted. Not much gutsiness here, just the anonymity of the bland.
There are, though, one or two oddities. A larger painting contains floating figures, one with pre- Raphaelite hair streaming behind, isolated refugees from a Baroque ceiling that might suggest a way forward. Sadly, these figures tend to be drowned out by the more obvious references elsewhere, the pastiches of icons, the outlines of Pharaonic heads in full ceremonial mask. A laboured show that plays everything safe, takes no risks, and if it aspires to anything, aspires to the irredeemably thin.
For full details of the exhibitions, see Listings
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
Recommend this page