The Oval Shape as a Plastic Unit in the Work of El Sayed Abdou Selim

Author

culpture, Dept. of Art Education, Faculty of Specific Education, Kafrelsheikh University, Egypt.

Abstract

Fifty years before the 1980s, independently from both Mukhtar and Western Art, a few Egyptian sculptors headed by Gamal El-Seginy, Mansour Faraj, Ahmad Osman, Mahmoud Mousa, Abdalbadaa Abdelhahi, Mohieddin Taher and Adam Hanin, succeeded in establishing their own aesthetic projects. These projects combined, simultaneously and to varying degrees, the two extremes of the national identity and the universal character.  Since the late 1980s, there have been radical changes in young artists' attitudes towards the World Art Movements. The sculptor, Abdo Salim, comes in a very special and different form from all of his predecessors. Affected by creative and daring cultural works of art which come out of the world of nature and its laws, he shattered these works of art and then turn them into new and amazing aesthetic elements that correspond to the surreal school with a different vision. This is how his sculptural works stem with intertwined, transformed and reciprocating organisms of humans, animals, birds, and even earthworms showing special relationships of love, conflict to death, immortality, tenderness and aggression. His logic does not seem far from the logic of Egyptian mythology which is full of winged-animal and multi-legged birds, the hugging images of women and birds representing the elements of femininity and masculinity in one body, the rituals of birth from the womb of the earth, the burning desire for the forbidden fruit, the journey of eternal life through the coffins, the worm-driven wheel of death and the tree of Paradise loaded with contradictory creatures and instincts. At the Fifth Cairo Biennale, the artist Abdo Selim presented a collection of sculpture works that are considered a new transformation vision of the contemporary Egyptian Sculpture Movement. The works were a different approach from the Egyptian plastic movement in terms of theme and form, distinguished in subject and strange performance. What is crucial, here, is the oval shape, especially that is represented in the egg shape, where the cohesion and eternal continuity in its meaning as a symbol of resurrection and survival. The artist came here with expressions that opened a visual scape in the movement of the contemporary Egyptian sculpture, shedding light on a new artistic vision and an important aspect in the history of modern Egyptian sculpture which is the subject of the current research.  The problem of the current research can be summarized in the need for utilizing the oval shape as a new plastic symbolic unit and shedding light on an important aspect of the works of the artist El-Sayed Abdo.  The current research, which adopted a descriptive, analytical design, aimed at shedding light on works that have caused a kind of transformation in the contemporary Egyptian art. The current research might be significant for opening new horizons and providing a new vision of contemporary Egyptian sculpture. It was concluded that Egyptian history and environment, with their richness and treasures, enrich the artist's vision than other arts.
 
 
 
 

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