A unique collection of some 90 paintings in acrylic on canvas board and paper entitled Seasons in Chrome opened this week at the spacious three-floor TAM Art Gallery in Abu Rawash, off the Cairo-Alexandria Road. With the high ceiling of the ground floor, Abdelwahab Abdelmohsen’s larger landscapes had ample space in which to be viewed.
Born in Kafr Al-Sheikh in the Nile Delta in 1951, Abdelmohsen is an iconic figure in Egypt’s contemporary art scene. He graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Alexandria, earned a PhD there in 1989, exploring contemporary art in the light of the great 10th-/11th-century philosopher and poet Abul-Alaa Al-Maarri. In 2013, Abdelmohsen founded the Al-Burullus Painting Workshop, with the aim of inviting local and international artists willing to interact with the locals to paint murals on the walls and boats inspired by life in the small village.
The current exhibition celebrated nature in all its manifestations, combining trees, birds, fish, rivers and clouds in an expressionist style. Here as elsewhere in the course of his long and exuberant career, the award-winning and globally recognised artist and teacher focuses on nature in the Nile Delta. “I believe an artist should depict things related to their own environment,” he told me. “An artist’s work should reflect their experience, and the philosophy and culture of their place of origin. It should enable others to appreciate that nature and that heritage.”
In Abdelmohsen’s last two exhibitions – Beside Water, held at the Azad Art Gallery in Zamalek in 2021; and Paradise Rivers, held last year at Cordoba Art Gallery in Mohandessin – the exhibits are inspired by Al-Burullus village, near Abdelmohsen’s birthplace, where he spends most of his time. “Lake Burullus is known as the cradle of all kinds of mythology; the legends I listened to as a child.” Here too the paintings have the imaginative power, depth of colour and emotional resonance that make his work unique.
With varying degrees of abstraction, he depicts the lake on large acrylic on canvas board paintings. In unpredictable, often thrilling combinations, he also depicts trees, birds, and fish. The Burullus catfish, depicted in cheerful colours, make up their own smaller group of paintings, echoing mythological tales of the creatures flying over the drainage canal of Koft; a previous exhibition dedicated to them was entitled The Koft Sewer. An orange-coloured tree grows out of a huge fish while, in the foreground, crows in black and grey take up the land; the lake is small, tranquil, a space for the eye to rest. A whole wall is dedicated to acrylic on paper paintings, all sized 63x39 cm, depicting the playful shapes of fish, reflecting the biodiversity of the lake, which boasts 33 species. From a distance the wall looks like the clear surface.
Abdelmohsen is also inspired by poetry, both the oral traditions of the village and the work of his generation of literary poets including such figures as Hassan Teleb and the late Mohamed Afifi Matar. Yet even though language is subliminally present, humans are almost totally absent in these paintings. “The ugly truth,” he says, “is that people destroy their beautiful landscape. This is why they are not welcome in my paintings.” His landscapes are slices of Eden, yet in at least one painting black soil and red blood gather round a dead animal with hacked, chopped trees.
Composition varies very widely although there is always balance. A palette of green, brown, blue and yellow dominates. Movement is strongly observed and omnipresent. The style is naive and childlike, setting aside the artist’s classical training to create an immediate spontaneous connection with the viewer. Like a child seeing the world with innocent eyes, he can give us Eden indeed.
The exhibition runs through 30 September.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 21 September, 2023 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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