Rania Khallaf reads some paintings on newsgathering Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni was at Al-Masar Contemporary Art Gallery in 26 July Street, Zamalek, last month to open its third season of exhibitions with a new show featuring the paintings of Hamdi Attia, Photojournalism's Abstracting Aesthetics. The works that adorn the walls of Al-Masar gallery are all abstract. The intrinsic contradiction between the title of the exhibition and the abstract works themselves is apparent from the very first moment. The spark of the strong colours, however, is a powerful surreal attraction. It is as if one is staring at pink clouds scattered in a disorganised fashion. The paintings do not have titles, but some carry what seems an odd message such as "The British are coming!" Attia's current work is mainly influenced by the 9--11 attacks on the United States, although those events did not have an immediate effect on the artist. "It was important to me at the time to figure out the human and political reaction to this sad event through the eyes of the media and then reflect my view through video art, the medium I used for years during my stay in the States," Attia told Al-AhramWeekly. One of Attia's significant images illustrates the effect of a shell dropping from the sky and exploding on Earth. Although there are no individuals in the picture, it conveys a sense of dramatic awe through the artist's use of hot red and blue paint. "I was very moved by the scenes of destruction in the aftermath of the attacks, and consequently by the ongoing destruction on Iraq [which was] first caused by American troops," he said. "I was also very moved by the images of regular bombings and killings of the Palestinian people in Gaza. When I Google the images of military attacks on Gaza on the Internet I find them almost unbearable, especially the sight of bombs falling from Israeli planes and causing destruction and terror." Hamdi Attia was born in Assiut, Upper Egypt, in 1964. He studied at the College of Fine Arts in Cairo, and pursued advanced studies in painting and sculpture at the Egyptian Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. He was also awarded an MFA in sculpture from the University of Pennsylvania. Attia represented Egypt at the Venice Biennial in 1995, sharing the top pavilion prize with Akram El-Magdoub. He was selected for the Cairo Biennial in 1997 and the Canaries Biennial in 2006. Attia's work has been featured in private and group exhibitions in Cairo, New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Paris, Rome, Sao Paulo, Oslo, and Copenhagen. He has been commissioned for a number of public works in Egypt, Italy, and the US. He currently lives and works between Chicago and Cairo. One of the paintings entitled "The Intellectual" is an illustration of a vague face posing gravely as if for the camera. Attia is supposedly mocking the iconic depiction in newspapers of famous intellectual figures. "There are some visual vocabularies which are usually conveyed by pictures of intellectuals that are published in newspapers," he said. "People took it for granted that intellectuals, for example, should look serious. And this, with time, gives more authority to the accompanying text, no matter how serious or trivial it is. I just find this hilarious!" "Looking deeply into topics such as image creating and the power of modern technology on the making of news and pictures is, I believe, the main question raised by this exhibition," Attia said. This is the first exhibition Attia has held in Egypt since he immigrated to the US in the 1990s. This particular exhibition is exhibited for the first time in Egypt rather than Chicago, his US home. According to Attia, the exhibition is "a part of an ongoing artistic and cultural project which has not yet ended." The exhibition runs until 13 November.
