Behind the Screen 2

His scratching lines are simply snatching pain or searching for joy. They are either pouring tears or stirring smiles. And so are the lives of those figures in his portraits; they are much similar to the layers of his works on copper.

The artist is busy to draw and outline the structures and features of his choices. Later, pressed by a bold solid tough piston, that press all they had; their memories, their rise and failure moments, are running to give birth for a new life, a new copy.

We might recognize the figures in the copy. We might point at them with their real names. And so we could walk along only to touch that human feeling combined with the color emotion that is passed secretly to us with no intentioned preoccupation by names and events.

The portraits – printed by the artist Mahmoud Al-Maghraby - are exhibited in FA Gallery with no titles. This time he realized that nude names have no meanings. Names are passing away, or they may be similar to other typical names. Only faces remain, only eyes remain, and so does the whole scene.

Behind the Screen, they are persons with unknown details. The familiar faces we know are hidden behind the screen under the masks of different faces. The politician, the belly dancer, and the actor are becoming virtual personalities. They are becoming only posters or symbols, whom we deal with under the sky of emotional, cultural, or ideological principals.

In this collection exhibited by Al-Maghraby in FA Gallery entitled "Behind the Screen" gives the feeling of POP ART printing. But the artist, with accurate transparency and practice, is rising above the stereotyping of such style, avoiding the real imitation of its techniques and forms, to offer us his new works, in their particularity and unique structure.

Al-Maghraby selected colors collection that focuses on red, yellow and blue – as basic ones – in addition to the blacks and browns for most of the portraits.

Beside the controlling focus on portrait, that occupies the most important space of his work, Al-Maghraby deals with other symbols and motifs, such as roses, circles, commercial brand logos that brings the time of his figures, in addition to some texts – readable or not – to feed the beauty and form of the print, with no messages involved. But those who consider speculating the collection shall discover, even with a shy representation, some hidden meanings of the social and political aspects gathering all of those characters. So it is meaningful to have the Egyptian president Jamal Abdul-Nasser next to his two native actresses Suad Hosny and Hind Rustom, and many other alike.

The artist Mahmoud Al-Maghraby is giving us almost 25 works with mono print. A unique print not repeated. Even copied prints have few copies. He wants to give them the value of scarcely available works.

Abed Alkadiri
Nov. 2010