Moina Fauchier Delavigne scales the walls of Cairo for Germanic graffiti Of the two German artists currently exhibiting at the Mashrabiya Gallery and the new Townhouse space in the Ciabbatta Café in Zamalek, Carola Rèmper and Casto, 37 and 25 years old respectively, the former's work is by far the more joyful. Producing energetic paintings under the stimulating title, Simply Black, Rèmper has nothing in common with the tortured artist who deploys personal suffering in the service of creativity. She will likely, rather, put you in a cheerful mood. Her paintings are an exercise in "playing with lines and schemes and exploring the tension between the two" -- a process reflected in her method. First, she makes freehand sketches in the open air, then, back in her studio she uses the resulting lines to create characters. The most interesting aspect of her work is the childlike sense of wickedness these creations betray. She endeavours not to take her work too seriously, a virtue never undermined by the comment: it could have been accomplished by a child. Her paintings could be thought of as the pieces of an oversized puzzle: a bright background in one strong colour -- sometimes plain, at other times striped or otherwise broken up, by a simple floral motif for example -- against which one or more lines inscribe the shape of an elemental character of very indeterminate nature. These creatures began to show up in her work in 2001. "I like to play with my viewers," she explains, "encourage them to imagine a story and discuss it among themselves, to try and figure out what these weird things represent. It's a private language of mine." A language of harmless, if incorrigibly naughty curves: never an angle to be seen; and the creatures that make up that language are of such striking flexibility, almost elastic in their simplicity, they could belong anywhere in the universe. Anyhow they always seem to be having a good time. In her ability to constantly surprise, Rèmper manages to keep abstraction fresh; each painting remains a game of discovery. She uses acrylic paints, she says, because the texture makes it look like plastic. The show also provides for a series of odd black objects. It took Rèmper more than a year to settle on the material with which to create them. She tried clay, plastic and finally fabric. In the end they look just like the figures of her paintings, conveying a sense of magic flexibility. This is not Rèmper's first time in Egypt, she had several stays, especially in Luxor, where last year she completed a big chalk drawing on the floor behind the Luxor Temple with artist Shaymaa Aziz. This was her first experience of the Egyptian street: "At first people didn't understand why we wanted to draw on the dirty floor, not on canvas, on which proper art is produced. But the idea of a gift that wouldn't last long grew on them." Casto, by contrast, had the opportunity to come to Cairo thanks to one his teachers at the University of Applied Arts in Germany, who sent him with another student to Helwan University to create a Latin font that looks like the Arabic alphabet last October. Casto never went back to Germany. While working at the alphabet, he started designing a web site for the Townhouse Gallery, and William Wells, its director, was so impressed with his approach he offered him the chance to create the present project, his debut solo exhibit: an enormous double mural made up entirely of spray-can graffiti and covering two walls at the end of Abul-Feda Street, Zamalek -- the terrace of a top-end restaurant, and the Townhouse's latest acquisition. Completed in six days, the work consumed 14 out of 24 hours of each and some 30 spray-paint cans besides. It makes an excellent, appropriately gentle introduction to the largely unfamiliar world of street art. Though people at home could not understand what was driving him to come to Egypt for a graphic design exchange, the experience has proved to be immensely beneficial for Casto. This will not be his last time in the country, he says. He wants to organise a project to create another huge mural, this time in collaboration with other artists. Entitled Writing on the Wall, this is the first such project to take place in Egypt; the word "graffiti" does not even have an equivalent in Arabic. But Casto's work is a far cry from the largely illegal mess associated with this brand of inner-city creativity. The two walls give an impression of order, in fact, the artist having managed to integrate his piece into the serene atmosphere of the surroundings -- the neat wooden deck of the restaurant, dotted with umbrella- covered furniture. Initially the young artist had thoughts of creating something inspired by Arabic calligraphy -- the theme he had been working on. Many Egyptians could do it better, however, he decided, finally opting for something "closer to European graffiti" that would appeal to the people of Cairo by virtue of difference rather than familiarity. He called it Typograffix, reflecting the combination of graffiti with typography and the elaborate graphic approach. He manages to achieve a subtle harmony between neat, fluid lines on coloured surfaces and high-impact graffiti, demonstrating the versatility of the spray-can effect. A deeply impressive piece, especially considering that the artist is a student: Casto manages to apply a range of techniques in a street art context, skilfully arranging his colours around clusters of paintings, writing, stencils and a variety of other components -- creating the impression of a vast visual journal, the front page of some impossible newspaper. Casto's art has evolved since he began to spray in his hometown in 1995, and in more and more interesting ways after he started studying "visual communication" in 2002 -- his first foray into the graphics studio and the possibilities it offers. (Many graffiti artists have had the same fate, starting on the street then moving onto studios, the famous German crew known as Viagrafik, which formed in 1998, being one example.) On the first wall the title of the work is painted in a light blue replication of the Cairo metro's mosaics. To the left, the word "Type-ograffix" demonstrates the evolution of the graffiti scene, from an exaggerated cursive style to stylised graphic fonts: "Type" is inscribed in a two-dimensional style reminiscent of 1970s New York, while "ograffix" is written in a more elaborate font -- in a different colour. Casto plays with this idea again on the second wall, creating a precise maze reminiscent of font pixels where stencils conceal codified messages -- "Digital", for example -- most of which turn out to be references to Casto's sources of inspiration. "Overall," the artist says, "I wanted to represent the visual impact that downtown Cairo made on me, and to include all the elements that inspired me." Traffic, for example, figures in the form of orderly lines going in many directions, satellite dishes which dot the roofs of buildings as tall flowers growing out of the ground. Casto also paints a car that could have been the property of Starsky & Hutch. Black and white, its contours blurred, the car is preceded by two straight stripes -- brown and blue -- which eventually fade back into the flat surface of the wall, imperceptibly. Casto employs a limited palette to match the colours of Egypt today, he explains: beige, yellow, brown and a sprinkling of blue, an effective tactic. Where he comes from in the south of Germany, though still viewed by the government as mere vandalism, graffiti is a highly developed art form now fast gaining the recognition of galleries. "Everything is possible," Casto goes on: "working at a gallery or on the street. Graffiti artists should not spurn the art market, so long as it doesn't prevent them from resuming their work in the open air -- for free." The notion of an illegal art form entering the gallery space does not phase him. Any tool can be used, he insists, so long as it helps graffiti move ahead. One such tool is the tape he uses to help keep his lines straight, which turns out to be far more controversial than one would imagine. "People in the scene are surprisingly conservative for law breakers," he says. But he will not restrict himself to spray-cans simply because the tradition insists on it. Instead he breaks that law too. Casto's work can be seen at www.delcasto.dewww.delcasto.de/p
