Emad Gomaa
Al watan newspaper

Folk theme, letters and myths
Life Improvisations discovered in El-Maghraby's plates

The Egyptian Ambassador Abd El-Rahim shalaby inaugurated the exhibition of the plastic artist Mahmoud El-Maghraby in Boushhri Art Gallery . Some Arab Ambassadors, plastic artists and the Egyptians community participate in the inaugurating of the exhibition, which contains about fourty plates.

The artist Mahmoud El-Maghraby introduces his creative experiment through etching considered one of the most difficult arts, which is rarely used by artists because of the great effort, and persistence required when dealing with it. His exhibition contains a group of works ranging in their sizes, colours and white and black.

These works are etched on Zink plate and reflect artistic excellent through defining the place and time full of redolence of history and public spirit pulsating with life, meanings, pains, dreams and sadness.

The public theme dominates most of El-Maghraby's plates through a group of walls carrying life improvisations, scribbles, letters, metal coins and writings which reflect pulsation of street and people. The deep holes in them interlace with inherited mythes and Arabic letters in its folk picture beating with meanings and symbols. The walls for El-Maghraby as he sees in Egyptian public culture mean a lot as a way to set free social, political and human suppressed, place configurations and my the dignity. What is applied on public walls in El-Maghraby's plates is applied too on the plates of the exhibitions.

The iron door dazzled the eyes with its wonderful present as a deceptive symbol for safety and imprisonment and as an expression of place aesthetic in folk life. He uses printing cast in a unique way where we find the iron door itself reappears in another plate to materialize other meaning in order to ascertain the meaning.

2nd of June 2005