Tabari Artspace gallery presented the works of Egyptian artist, Adel El Siwi, at Art Dubai.
Adel El-Siwi was born in Beheira, Egypt in 1952. El-Siwi focuses his work on interior scape, aiming to give the traditional still life objects pride and powerful presence. El Siwi chooses to use simple themes including: flower pots, palm trees and camels. He strongly believes that the more limited the means the stronger the potential of the expression and refuses to use any other medium of painting other than paper or canvas.
From 1970 to 1976, he studied medicine at Cairo University before seriously considering a career as a painter. Like other Egyptian artists of the late 1970s, El Siwi, who had emigrated to Europe and North America, was compelled to return to the motherland, drawn by the power of Egypt's legacy of art aesthetic achievement. In 1980 he moved to Milan only to return to Cairo in 1990 where he currently lives and works.
After twelve years of self-training and traveling Europe and Egypt he had his first major show in 1985 at the Cairo Atelier. Since the 1980s he has had solo exhibitions in Egypt, Germany, Lebanon and Italy. He has participated in group exhibitions as far across the globe as Brazil and Mexico. A 1988's exhibition at the Mashrabia Gallery in Cairo marked El Siwi's transition from the human figure to the interiors cape. This new phase attempted to give the traditional still life object pride and powerful presence. His latest works have been more narrative and ironic. Pure colors pierce the tonal elements, but are restrained by the somber Egyptian landscape marked by the monochromes of the desert and the grayness of Cairo. El-Siwi chooses to use the trite, simple themes of flower pots, palm trees, camels, etc. For considerable time, El Siwi strongly believed that the more limited the means the stronger the potential of the expression. Hence, he refused to use any other medium of painting than painting on paper or canvas. However, in his most recent work in the 1997's Venice Biennale's exhibition Modernity’s & Memories: Recent Works from the Islamic World, a room installation entitled The Face and Beyond, El Siwi explores the new genre of conceptual art through painting.
El Siwi’s recent works that is meant to inspire individuals to reconnect with their communities and examine relationship between the present moment and the past.
The whole work is about the magic relation between our daily life, our present moment, and something behind: something very old and deeply related to the far and remote past. “I tried to touch this relation through the human face for a very long time, yes the face: being old and recent in the same moment, now, perhaps I am haunting the same phantasm through the entire human figure.”