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Carmelo Strano |
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"DINAMYC LAYERING"
Critic Text by Carmelo
Strano
"Along his search, Gamal
runs two roads. Two dialectical and synchronic positions. As synchronic,
they give the sense of the Egyptian artist’s total world. One dimension
is related to the strong interest that Gamal has always had for the
scenography (which he has studied at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera
in Milan). He has made the most of this experience. He did it for the
paintings and for installations. Mostly his paintings are poised between
abstraction (tending to informal) and figuration and they are a sort of
colour’s performance, nothing else. I mean that the colour is never
instrumental in relation to any assumption or message. Even when the
figure shows marked contours, to it is not given any meaning. In these
cases, the risk is to linger on it with complacency or decorative
approach. That is how to establish a loosening of the colour’s power in
favour of a figurative story that, it soon becomes clear, to Gamal it
doesn’t interest. Therefore, the scenografic dimension is translated
into the colour’s performance. The other aspect of this scenografic
dimension is given by the installations. Into these, Gamal Meleka
obtains an interesting balance between expression modes and message.
Installation is not absolutist, it consists of a set of formal and
objectual elements targeted to a thesis. Obviously, this thesis will be
strongly affirm, if the language used is strong.
For installations Gamal
puts formal inventiveness and dynamism in succession of elements. Also,
if the colour is an ancient subject but ever actual, for his
installions, Gamal employs technological materials, from industrial to
informatics, as it is well demonstrated by the work that he has created
two years ago as part of the Biennale of Cairo.
I come back and I recover the original proposal of the two dialectical
and synchronic positions that underlies all Gamal’s research. One
position is refered to the scenography about which I have just said. The
other position is, as announced, the opposite. It is not the performance
but the stratification, it is not the emersion but the immersion. And we
are to works that are proposed in this publication and to whom in the
last four years, Gamal dedicates himself with particular decision and
happiness. The informal approach is still the protagonist. Only that it,
rather than vehicular tout court the artist’s mood, it acts building.
Instead the general and impregnable artist’ mood, this informal approach
expresses his sense of culture and history. In these works we might call
"dynamic layering", Gamal expresses himself with the awareness of his
own culture, the ancient Egyptian tradition. Usually, into Gamal, the
informal approach has had the Western influence. In these "dynamic
layering" this western influence is strongly loosened and the informal
approach is combined with the Egyptian culture’s "sense" rather than
with Egyptian imagery. Gamal aims to give, or better to express,
sedimentation and stratification of his culture. But there is not a
formal elaboration or mental meditation. He creates but with the
instinct, loyal to his expressive connotations. Gamal stratifies with
resins that determine thicknesses and volumes. They are gilded or silver
and then "flavored" with antiqued patinas. The layered story is often
supported by wood, that accentuates the result of work which is in the
same time painting and sculpture. Sculpture as bas or high relief, in
any case far from the round. These dynamic layering sometimes are on
white, ultramarine blue, grey, monochrome background; in other occasions
they drown into a polychromy of vivid or dull hues. If generally the
bottom remains the same, sometimes the colour is dynamized, shaked, and
it is infiltrated into the layering’ folds. But the story remains dry,
harsh, almost as it is an historical story."
Carmelo
Strano
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il critico d'arte Osama Afifi
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Meleka's icon of Eternity
By Osama Affifi
Beware of
artist Gamal Melika! He loves playing tricks on the viewers and art
critics. Meleka loves trying every trick in the book. His art
displays very childish frivolities. For example, giving the
impression that his elements are moving towards the south, he
deceptively points to the opposite direction. Likewise, he
frivolously points to the west, although the east is the direction.
Secret potentials of Meleka's admirable technique and substances are
too difficult to decode. He paints—behind layers of his 'intriguing
substances—creatures bore in his soul; his unfulfilled dreams; his
fears; his anxieties, his roots and emotions. It was late art critic
Ahmed Fouad Selim, who realized that Meleka's art is frivolous.
Introducing the artist's exhibition in Akhenaton Gallery, Selim
said: "Meleka is an artist, who is trying to establish his identity
in that area, which lies between existence and non-existence."
Selim gave cleverly a brief account of Meleka's artistic, human and
dramatic experiment since its beginning in the 1960s. The boy took
drawing up in the Club of Talents. His instructors were artist
Ragheb Ayyad, Hamed Nada and Ghaleb Khater. Meleka also studied at
Brera Academy of Art in Milan.
Meleka's painting, scenography, sculpture and installations display
a Hamlet-like enactment to draw a line between existence and
non-existence. However, I oppose critics, including Selim, who
categorized Meleka as an artist, who stands in an area between
abstract art and representation; modernity and heritage; and
formative art and leitmotif.
Meleka does not allow any of the opposites to overwhelm his
experiment. Rather, he blends them and dips his brush in this
mixture to paint the reality, which he appreciates. That is why his
art, visible in accumulating layers of substances, techniques and
experiments, reveals as Roger Garaudy had put it, realism without
coasts. In other words, Meleka introduces a realism visible to him
alone—not to anyone else. Visionaries, such as painters, poets and
musicians, see what is invisible to ordinary people. For example, it
is the artist, who ties the tree, the electric wire and the café
chair with a magic [invisible) cord. The viewer will not realize
that these objects are scattered in the surface. It is the artist's
individual vision, which reassembles the reality, and rediscovers an
extraordinary relationship between objects. The artist's reality is
completely different from that, which is visible to the ordinary
viewer.
French philosopher Victor Basch should be acknowledged for stating
that aestheticians, art critic and essayists do not allow their
senses to influence their meditations and thoughts. The artist's
chief task is to help decode aesthetic phenomenon to help ordinary
viewers have better understanding in this respect.
ِArt
critic and aestheticians, they should not by any means be subjective
It is Meleka's lines, colours, pastes and forms, which activate
frivolities in his painting. They are his spokespersons. I mean that
Melika introduces his optical vocabularies to communicate with the
viewer smoothly—without an interlocutor or mediator. Therefore, it
is the essayist's chief task to shed light on the aesthetic language
in the work
Meleka introduces a panoramic display of his unique vision of the
world. He is a strong voice of the beauty of the existence. He is
seeking to establish a strong edifice, which could overshadow the
ugliness of non-existence
Meleka's new exhibition echoes the Sphinx's hums of history. He uses
his unique vocabulary, languages and motifs to highlight the beauty
of the existence in the face of the ugliness of the non-existence
The Sphinx, who is the guardian of the gate of eternity, stands at
the illusive line of the living and the dead; of the glowing
physical existence and the frigid atmosphere of the intriguing
metaphysical world
In his exhibition, Meleka is attempting to provide answers to
several questions about sophisticated topics and arguments about
humanity and art. For example, the Sphinx is the intense display of
hints and insinuations inherited by generations. The monumental work
is a mythological eyewitness of the past and the present. But how
would an artist base his work entirely on another artwork
Also regardless of its mythological features (a lion's body and a
human head) Egyptians and foreigners across the world are treating
the sphinx with the easy familiarity as an epical creature squatting
in his place around all the time. Aristotle had said that the epical
artwork should not be a copy of the existing reality. According to
Aristotle's advice, the artist should create metaphysical and
mythological creatures, which could dim living and visible
counterparts
Accordingly, Meleka deals in his exhibition with the Sphinx in its
capacity as an artwork and an epical creature, too. Meleka
transformed the Sphinx to an icon intense with indicators, referents
and signs, which stir up an admirable and intriguing atmosphere in
the work. In his attempt to reveal the invisible elements behind the
icon, Meleka apparently seeks to decode the secrets hidden behind
colours and substances of such a monumental artwork
He revealed creatures, which are multiplying and trying to break the
mystery of the Sphinx. Corners of Meleka's paintings are the
birthplaces of his creatures and shades
Meleka chiefly celebrates the human dimension in his Sphinx. He
depicted the statue's majestic human head. His technique is
influenced by several schools of ancient Egyptian art. It is known
that miniatures of the Sphinx in museums in different cities in the
world display techniques and delicate or monumental details, which
were popular among ancient artisans at that time. Further, some
paintings Meleka made depict the Sphinx with a beautiful and
delicate head of a woman. It seems that the artist is repudiating
sex discrimination
Blue, brown, crimson, and interlaced yellow and pink highlighted the
iconic Sphinx's message over times. Meleka cleverly transformed the
time-honoured Egyptian icon to his self portrait, which is throbbing
with the artist's sufferings, transformations and changes; the
artist eventually shed light on his estranged self. His self appears
to be striving to break the fetters of cultural and intellectual
dualities of globalization. It is also apparent that the artist is
struggling to come to terms with his self, which is standing
majestically at the separation line between the beauty of the
existence and the ugliness of non-existence
A struggle between Meleka's straight, rough and tamed lines play
beautiful melodies echoing in his surprising shades and his bold
skimming. He created a contemporary icon intense with worries, which
are overwhelming contemporary man. Meleka's icon also displays
techniques of modern art, superb performance and the epic of the
Sphinx, globally known as the guardian of civilization—since the
Nile started to flow through its course
I am confident that Meleka's new experiment has opened the door of a
new epical stage in his work. He deepened his artistic identity and
has gained a stronghold at the separation area between existence and
non-existence
OSAMA AFFIFI
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Megahed Elazab
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Megahed Elazab
Al Megalla 08/2014
Gamal Meleka is an Egyptian artist. Resident in Italy for more than 30
years, and is the only foreigner winning nine medals of President of the
Italian Republic, and three of his Holiness Pope John Paul, the Golden pen
of Ravenna, Italian Critics Award sculpture 2011.
Artistic works, variety, between painting and sculpture using different
materials and unique performance techniques and more dynamic conflicted
between shadow and light in an intimate and familiar, between mass and
cutting her free bilateral together, mass embraces the vacuum and vacuum
compressor block simultaneously, while maintaining the sense of vacuum,
despite his long and estrangement and global fame and awards throughout
his career, he lectured lasting not moving away from being an Egyptian, or
optical storage technical drawing roots spanning History and origin of
rural and realize of pictures and references and symbolic tales and folks
and nostalgia is not interrupted
Megahed Elazab
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Samaa Yhia
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Samaa Yhia
Al Halal 04/2014
Gamal Meleka
Strove through his journey with art that started in Egypt since his
childhood in Cairo Center for gifted. Where he studied by senior
professors "Ragheb Ayad – Hamed Nada-Ghalib kahter." To made his mark and
its impact derived from authentic heritage and affected and interactive
experience of his life in Italy, the heritage of the past for him is only
part of the present and the surrounding environment, this environment is
not the past but present in his mind, his experiences and his imagination,
his past is part of the knowledge of the present. Thus linking the
characteristic fused his vision and his personality, his beliefs and his
imaginations, dreams and discovers the amazing trajectory that
characterized his career through its evolution since the start
until now
The human being and its relationship to time and what impact is the
dominant idea of Meleka art. The works are scenes from a flowing rhythm
and harmony between man and nature surrounding a generator so see the
circular time, renewed life and monitor the effects of the temporal body,
soul and is explained clearly in the work of the artist all of sculpture
or photography. He opted for his sculpture of formations from deep
history, and mummies of Pharaohs. Not governed by technical creativity in
composition only, ignoring the laws of nature and the physical component,
because all these factors lose their relevance to the flow of emotions in
expressive movements that are compatible for these sculpture
It melts and dismantling within the article for his statues with spaces
and grooves into the Aether and time and place formidable State of harmony
with the infinity express the souls of his temporal and spatial boundaries
and Existentialism, and all relative concepts governing the human body and
skip to the nature of the human spirit
The statue of Meleka is not in silence, but also just to put a fixed
static decision body in motion or is truncated sliced off for moment taken
by the body in motion such as the freezing of certain specific sense of
moment, and we here sought an artist to express movement and the rhythm of
life is not only external physical external event but rather a spiritual
movement inward Internal primarily represent our humanity and our material
emanating from our thoughts and our minds and our feelings as human
beings, and Passion has different memories, memory and all concepts
gives meaning and understanding of body language. And terminates its
artist sculptured light we view from bust, cavity light so hard the
eternal which does not change, but the Earth with their lives
and the places about which
supports the concept of the absolute and the renewed spirit and mission at
the same time..
SAMAA YHIA |
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