Al-Akhar (The Other) is the title of Ayman Taher's latest exhibition, at the Salah Taher Hall, Cairo Opera House, whose opening last month drew in a large number of artists, ministers and ambassadors. Ayman Taher, the son of the great artist Salah Taher, was born in Egypt in 1946 and graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in 1970. Working in the experimental and articulate tradition established by his father, Taher says, “I wanted to express the other, which is not only the unconscious but also practically anything. Jean-Paul Sartre said that hell is other people, but he went on to say that love too is other people…” Taher shows 51 acrylic and oil paintings making use of the palette knife and completed in the course of one year. “There were five or six paintings that hadn't been completed two years ago, but all of a sudden I completed them and the whole dialogue of this exhibition started to come together.” Here as in his previous exhibition “Towards Harmony”, Taher's cubist and abstract approach also incorporates folk and surreal motifs like a red fish and blue eyes recalling André Breton's novel Nadja. Though black and white remain dominant, Taher – a photographer and scuba diver – follows his passion for the sea, showing luminous and glittering creatures and coral reefs. He also paints the desert, birds and animals. Taher says his father's work remains his greatest influence even though commentators have pointed out that he has liberated himself from his father's style. He proudly cherishes the fact that being Salah Taher's son, he grew up among such luminaries as Naguib Mahfouz and Tawfik Al-Hakim (who inaugurated his first solo exhibition) as well as the composer Zakaria Ahmed, the vernacular poet Bairam Al-Tonsi and the great diva Um Kolthoum, whom he painted. Like Salah Taher, however, Ayman went through all stages and schools of art: classical, abstract and surreal.
