Marie-Thérèse Abdel-Messih explores the concept of place Abstraction is a common feature of pictorial Arab art. Calligraphy and design are particularly clear examples of this; and in the lithographs of Hussein Gebali (b. 1934), the latter acquires an additional aesthetic dimension. His current exhibition at the Cordoba Gallery shows how he re-appropriates Arab sign language -- Arabic calligraphy, for example -- together with floral and vegetal motifs and architectural forms, transforming such traditional signs into labyrinthine patterns, meaningful despite their largely inaccessible symbolic content. Gebali is a State Merit Award winner (2001); his career goes back to the early 1960s. He was academically trained as lithographer in Cairo's School of Fine Arts and a number of European art institutions. He has been chairperson of the Graphic Department in several art faculties, presided over the National Society for Graphics and the Artists' Syndicate. Active on both the local and international scene, his work attempts to reconcile the rift separating ancient tradition and modern technology. In classical Arab art, the use of calligraphy insinuates textual reading, but in Gebali's works, the Arabic characters remain haphazard, their import never quite suggesting textual significance. Although uprooted from their context, the letters bear the seeds of meaning in their alliance with magic and mathematics, intimating both high and popular art. As opposed to the symmetry of floral and vegetal motifs in arabesque, Gebali's work is characterized by variety; his modification of archetypal ornamentation break down the motifs into incomplete spirals, curves, lines. In the past, calligraphy and geometric ornamentation were devised as an alternative to representational images of the human and the divine in art. Gebali uses both styles, in the present, to break geometrical reiterations, constructing complex shapes that intimate nature instead. In the process, strictly marked contours dissolve into weightless relations. As such he imbues a highly stylised form with personality, suggesting, through calligraphy, an individual's handwriting. The conventionally static arabesque is likewise invested with dynamism: spirals enter into conflict with linear and curvilinear shapes, generating movement. The shapes sometimes cluster in groups, which may be viewed individually or in relation to other groups. The movement does not proceed in one direction, but rather in relation to the (diverse) whole. Surface construction is similarly discontinuous -- its constituents seem unrelated -- and thus divorced from the rigid geometries of Arab ornamentation; there is none of the symmetry, repetition or continuity that defines Arab art. Simple motifs move forward, or else revolve around a centre. Gebali's compositions are characterised by asymmetry as well as discontinuity. He offers new ways of looking at old ideas, and new glosses on modern technology. Rather than a motif forged into a pattern reproduced ad infinitum, he offers shapes that have no volume, foregoing the illusion of light (used to create foreground or background in space). The spatial quality manifests itself, rather, through colour, with some colours appearing to be closer to the eye than others, and gradual changes in the density of the texture casting a tactile shadow on the intangible. At times the texture evokes the rawness of clay, straw, opaque stone, wood, even transparent or thick fabric -- an integration of the natural and the functional customarily to be found in basketry, pottery and mud brick building. Where calligraphy and design are blank, Gebali's technique adds colour and texture. The antithesis of black and white in Arabic calligraphy is transformed into an antithesis of dark and light tones or warm and cold colours: red, blue and green. Blue and violet induce a solemn mood; when they are centripetal, interspersed with black, they absorb the viewer in solemnity. Grey too is centripetal at times, forming a breathing space. Some works are a well-balanced mix of blue, yellow and green. Arab art strives after spiritual harmony between nature and the abstract. Abstract motifs in ornamentation are mathematical configurations of objects found in nature, or of organic forms. The simplification of natural and organic forms in sign language is meant to stress the connection of the material to the immaterial. And if Gebali's compositions counter traditional geometrical configurations, they also explore new possibilities for perceiving complex relationships, in the construction of which the viewer takes part. No longer is the viewer enraptured by a mystical experience that captures hidden meanings; but rather experiences a new vision of local place through an opening up of the possibilities of textural formations in space. The surface of the lithograph -- a modern "technoscript" -- is visually transformed into woven fiber, a lacework mesh or basketry, a mud brick surface, carved wood, stone. The graphics can be seen as a transcription of an infinitely sprawling desert, peopled by indistinguishable figurines wandering individually but in touch with each other. Current local and global changes stimulate images that clash with one's vision of an ordered environment. One assimilates a vision of order in the process of growing up in a particular place, and becoming a member of a community. Art practice is a yearning for order, and in this sense cultural heritage provides an artist eager to restore order to a disordered community of vision with a major source of inspiration. The artist has recourse to cultural heritage through a rereading of its visual forms, be they ornamental or functional. They acquire significance not only through formal arrangement but through the possibilities they generate -- new ways of seeing, which go beyond both stultifying tradition and estranged (Western) modernism. Arab art is misconceived by many as uniform among the different Arab nations, although it has been marked by strong regional distinctions through the ages, and in Gebali's work as elsewhere geographic location has left its imprint on the artist's mode of visualising space. This exhibition demonstrates one artist's search for an understanding of the relation between his creativity and his place in the world. Gebali's exhibition continues at Cordoba Gallery until 15 June. For full details, please see Listings.
