Medhat Alaam
Alrai Alaam Newspaper

Mahmoud El-Maghraby Reflects public Grieves
In Motifs etched on Zinc
Abd El-Rahim Shalaby inaugurates his exhibition in Boushahri Art Gallery

The Egyptian Ambassador Abd El-Rahim Shalaby in Kuwait inaugurated last Monday evening in Boushahri Art Gallery one-man show of the Egyptian plastic artist Mahmoud El-Maghraby that was attended by some Arab and foreign ambassadors and Editor in chief Dr.Sulieman El-Askary of Al-Araby magazine.

Mahmoud El-Maghraby raised in his exhibition many questions about man and his relations with life through plastic visions by which he entered into pure artistic realms with various internal monologues.

Colours which were glow on surfaces of his plates became much moving in several directions and reactive with the main subject of his art works which is represented by symbolism, adventure into dreaming vision and man's relation with his surroundings. We will find at first sight that El-Maghraby's art works contain prognostic features consisting of emotion and search for faces among its mysterious details. This search pushed the artist to enter consecutive stages in imagination depending on symbolic principles which need a vigilant mind to decode its charms which indicate it is a dream hovering round about human spaces with all his outlooks and pains.

El-Maghraby's plastic language seems to be very related with dream through what he achieved of artistic features of clear visions and sensual implications.

This language seems also to be very related with life, which appeared in El-Maghraby's entities that were without detailed features and were surrounded by colourful masses very sensitive and continuous with emotions of the viewer who wishes to see artistic forms that carry attractive plastic formulation with glow colours at the same time.

The artist iconography appeared in elements of his art works in which he used a harmonious artistic technique with continuous inclination towards moving the silence of the subjects and transformed them into cases with profound visions which are mobile at the same time. El-Maghraby tried in his art works by using Zincography to show various aspects of Egyptian life by presenting the history which seemed clear in ancient Egyptian coins, local motifs and forms of folk visions in which man enters its texture with all his outlook. He presented some plates containing different folk implications or what is called " public wall " with all its splits and drawing having mythes and Arabic letters used in moving forms of deep sensual meanings. He used also lime to draw these walls to ascertain the public spirit, which flow, by this material.

The spirit of the artist in other plates came near to doors that suggest Egyptian public culture through his careful study of these doors in various shapes and a simple method of simplicity and ability to generate many private public vocabularies in visions depend on artistic combinations moving in more than one direction.

El-Maghraby used what is called printing cast in artistic way which became harmonious with his vision through his insisting in transporting iron doors from plate to another plate in artistic consecutive full of meanings and imaginations. This method founded in the viewer's emotion an impression helps him to know the concept of plastic language in each plate.

The artist moved in his plates to other visions in which things seem near the emotion and relative with the reality be the most symbolism when he defined faces that he coloured by red to indicate the visions carrying many artistic properties with suggestions and various artistic signs. They are the visions of the artist for reality and imagination in which the element of adventure or astonishment appeared together to give glow to the plates of the exhibition.

El-Maghraby got near in his plates from very private regions in life. His skill in Zincography helped him to express many grieves in the public consciousness to which he pointed more than once in most of his plates. Hopes and outlooks of the Egyptian youth artist Mahmoud El-Maghraby belong on this basis to a spirit hovering round about spaces of dream and search for new subject and making effort to imply in his visions more vitality and emotional flow.

2nd of June 2005