September Story infuses daily life with abstract commentary

Three artists - Maha George, Sahar El-Amir and Shaker El-Edreisy - use abstract expressionism to examine Egypt's daily life in a group exhibition titled September Story

Women, chaos and the desert ... The city, the lights, even more chaos ... Three artists representing abstract expressionism look into today's experiences with a modern perspective.
Maha George, Sahar El-Amir and Shaker El-Edreisy – currently displaying their works at Art Corner Gallery in Zamalek – consider their canvases to be a stage or a space where a performance takes place. It is here, in the group exhibition tilted September Story, that the abstract expressionist pictorial movement takes place. The three artists are progenies of a movement which emerged in New York, shortly after World War 2, before its influences became palpable in Latin America, Europe and Asia.
Driven by economic, political and artistic circumstances, the pioneers of abstract expressionism created a new way of painting. Allowing themselves to take action on canvas, the three artists exhibiting at Art Corner Gallery are being pushed in a similar ideological direction, responding to Egypt's current situation.
At the entrance to the gallery, the colourful paintings by El-Amir portray the chaotic world: a Cairene's daily life, where rules of dimensions and perspective are not respected.
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The artist says she is looking for "visual convergence" with fabrics, colored paper and pointillism, as she takes up the themes of the city, with its lights, popular cafes, flags, etc. – a scent of the everyday, bathed in an abstract atmosphere.
Meanwhile, George's patchwork is more like a carnival game, infusing the city with a more childish spirit, where women move through different states of mind and historical moments. A girl, a doll, a bride, a peasant, a saint on a Coptic icon, Mona Lisa ... all are present amid the scenery.
"There are many popular motifs which surround my female protagonists, who are suppressing their ambitions in time and space," says George.
George's protagonists are somehow trapped on her canvases, as life's details give weight to the work. She says she's inspired by quilt art (also known as art quilting): "Quilt art is a textile art that spans across the continents and eras. Its earliest testimony was discovered in a cave in Mongolia. It was also known to ancient Egyptians."
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El-Edreisy also works in art quilting – however, he devotes himself more to drip painting, a technique which allows him to let colours flow through the canvas in a spontaneous way.
El-Edreisy presents large sceneries that are predominantly yellow, the colour of the Egyptian desert. We see men in action during the harvest, a wedding night, all propelling us towards the airiness.
He says he is "bewitched by the beauty of the white desert and the Bedouin towns where (he) was born."
"I like to express their beauty while recreating them in my own way ... one can still imagine (these) characters and this due to the rhythm of the life in an oasis which I managed to express on canvas."
Programme:
The September Story exhibition continues until 15 September
Art Corner Gallery, 12 Sayed Bakri Street, Zamalek, Cairo
Open daily from 11am to 11pm, except Sundays
This article has been translated from Al-Ahram's French weekly, Al-Ahram Hebdo
http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/110472.aspx