Tabari Artspace Gallery presented a rare collection of paintings by Adel El Siwi in an exhibition entitled “Faces”.
El Siwi’s painting represents those personalities still present in the collective memory of the Egyptian people such as public figures, movie stars, famous singers, leaders, sport champions but sometimes these characters are shown in a details manner painted with a personal memory. The paintings are like albums of fashions, emotions, gestures belonging to bygone days; they are like portray of a time through the faces and environment of its protagonist. El Siwi is concerned about the exercise of charisma, the capacity of seduction and the emanation of aura on his paintings.
El Siwi was born in Beheira, Egypt in 1952 and studied medicine at Cairo University before seriously considering a career as a painter. He had his first major show in 1985 at the Cairo Atelier. In 1988 exhibition, held at the Mashrabia Gallery in Cairo marked his transition from the human figures to the interiorscape. In this new phase he attempted to give the traditional still life object pride and powerful presence. El Siwi chooses to use the trite, simple themes of flower pots, palm trees, camels, etc. He strongly believed that the more limited the means the stronger the potential of the expression and refused to use any other medium of painting than painting on paper or canvas. But in 1997 Venice Biennale’s exhibition, El Siwi explore a new genre of conceptual art through painting by exhibiting his newest collection of paintings entitled “The Face and Beyond.” In this collection he acknowledges his past, as a cycle of repetition always in returns to its starting point and acknowledges as well the presence of the collective in the individual, attempting to blur the boundaries between the two. This exhibition of exploration in discovery and rediscovery sets El Siwi apart from other painters.
Furthermore, El Siwi is film art director, writer about contemporary art and experimented virtual work projection on buildings. He also translated Leonardo Da Vinci’s Treatise on painting into Arabic.