Al-Arabi magazine

In Mahmoud El-Maghraby's exhibition
Angry walls

In the exhibition of the plastic artist Mahmoud El-Maghraby held in Boushahri Art Gallery at the end of its artistic season, the plate itself gives for the technique more than what it gives for the subject matter inspire of richness of vocabularies used by the artist and its ability to represent individually an exhibition in its own.

This exhibition contains a group of works most of them by etching on Zink in order to return the Egyptian memory in which Mahmoud El-Maghraby lived pr reduced from events around him. The persistency of this material or technique, to be accurate, may lead the artist to contemplate life around him.

The method in which the etching is done represents a time wall starting with etching on metal plate of Zink by using acids, needle or chisel of various shapes. After finishing the etching on the Zink, he prepares his deep lines and printing it, and then he produces the printed copy on which the etched lines appear in relief when printing on paper because of the strong pressure of the printing machine. These relief engraves have their explanation in old and rare coin pictures and on signs with various alphabets on wall which range from childish words to vocabularies with their spirit and colour make you remember protestations of Palestinians against occupation, engraved on the city walls.

In another corner of the exhibition, El-Maghraby tries to present or show his skills in using mixed materials with harmonious or contrast colour in order to make the viewer astonished or protested. Whether this is possible or not, there is no doubt that his following exhibition will try to concentrate on one theme and one technique as when he started his artistic life with an exhibition full of public pains and hopes when he was a sophomore in the faculty.

The walls covered by El-Maghraby's plates about angry walls are transformed into luminous creative energies and become picture of life futile and noise whether by using colours or words which suggest the concealed and implied of self expressions and their social and human suffering.

September 2005