The Pharaoh's cut

Whether horizontal or vertical, Hassan Kamel's sculptures prove he is under the magic spell of ancient Egypt. Reham El-Adawi tries to read his mind during her short stay in Aswan

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Kamel carving his piece in Aswan; The Throne sandstone sculpture at Horice Park, the Czech Republic

With the cooperation of the Cultural Development Fund, sculptor Adam Henein has managed to create a very successful event: the annual Aswan Sculptural Symposium, which has proven to be one of the most respected cultural events on the Egyptian calendar. For the past 14 years, the symposium has brought sculptors from across the globe to work together and produce pieces of sculpture out of the beautiful Aswan rose granite. Among them is the young Egyptian sculptor Hassan Kamel.

The granite sculpture entitled "In the Presence of the King and Queen" marks a strong comeback for the gifted Kamel, who is participating for the fourth year in the symposium. This year's event continues until 7 March.

In past rounds Kamel was very much concerned with the various solutions of the horizontal form. In 2005 he created a horizontal sculpture of rose and black granite of a seated king and queen playing chess. This piece is currently on display at the Aswan Open-Air Museum. Soon after the 2005 event, however, he began to pay more attention to vertical shapes.

Kamel presents his sculptures in a manner that leads them closely to resemble Pharaonic offering tables. His pieces are charged with harmony and passion in every corner, and the masses are combined in an exceptionally organic manner.

Inspired by the grace and aura of Pharaonic statues, Kamel has presented the current symposium with a new modification of the idea. There is a space between the king and queen for the viewer to pass through, and he has included a step to convey the notion of being in the presence of the king and queen. Coping with the latest trends in contemporary art, such as installations, he enables the viewer to become part of his artwork and to react and sense the touch of stone. "There is always a secret dialogue between me and the piece of granite," Kamel says. "I sense the stone and interact with it, and sometimes it imposes its own character."

Kamel obtained a PhD for a study on a very interesting and infrequently tackled subject: sculptures produced by Egyptian and foreign sculptors who are implicitly or explicitly inspired by ancient Egyptian sculpture. His king and queen immediately remind one of those ancient Egyptian statues that are enveloped in a glorious aura.

For this year's work, Kamel has used rose granite to carve two separate standing blocks for the king and queen that measure 2.5x1x1metres with a base of 0.5x1x2 metres.

As the eye approaches his sculptures and begins to grasp what it is seeing, a hidden melody is revealed, a melody filled with sorrow, delicacy and sensitivity reflected in the movements created on the surface of the opposite sides of the sculpture and combining the internal and external body of the object.

Kamel has also worked with bronze, and fell in love with this natural material. "Bronze is a very smooth material and I love its glitter," he says. As a professor of sculpture at the Fine Arts Department at Cairo University, Kamel believes that all schools of art, whether surrealism, cubism or expressionism, began with the ancient Egyptian civilisation but were wrongly associated with European artists.

Kamel is infatuated with the abstract figures that symbolise the concepts in abstract and are not copying reality, but some of his works are figurative while others are semi-abstract as well as monumental sculptures. He also prefers cubic statues such as his marble work titled "The Offering Table".

Among Kamel's accomplishments are his 2009 granite and bronze statue "Peace Messenger" at the new Cairo International Airport; a sandstone sculpture measuring 2.5x1.6x1.2 metres which is displayed at Horice Park in the Czech Republic; "The Fountain", a Vicenza- stone sculpture shown at the Nanto Sculpture Symposium in Italy 2007; and an abstract sculpture made of Carrara marble currently on show at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.

In his upcoming exhibition due to be held next month at the Saad Zaghloul Museum in Cairo, Kamel will focus on the harmony between vertical sculptures intersected by horizontal ones.