Charisma

The Diaries … The Temporal …

In physical realms, diaries by default, are inseparable from their time. Throughout the history of literary fiction, past and present were elements for questioning: is our preset really the present? Did it actually happen? Are temporal elements of past, of present and of future, all one concept of illusion? Time, in a discourse of rationality, is linked to memory, and memories are “controlled” rationally. Is there an alternative to Time? Can anyone live outside the spatial and the temporal? Time swallows all real memories, and is able to lose some along the process in “times” of effervescence. One’s perception of Time dictates the way one feels about it; personal perception eases how one handles the temporal, especially how in the physical world one treads on the forbidden, in thought or in action. Peace of mind and conscientiousness help one traverse realms of the “present”, especially when loaded with the ambush of all forbidden.

Certainty, if there is such a concept, proposes that Time is not extracted from a source, or is the product of one’s perception, or entirely derived from illusion. From that thought, one is required to derive personal realities, the concept of the real that is not haphazard. Space and Time are also not a coincidence. In El-Siwi’s practice, everything painted is intentional, not coincidental, persistently derived from his very own personal memories, mixing space, time, past, present, sometimes future to formulate his alternative painted fables. In every new work, all elements transcend the common rational perception of Time, to exist in a visual text specific to Adel El-Siwi.

The Dream …. The Myth …

In a sense, El-Siwi dreams to paint, yet it is not certain that he ever paints his dreams, for those painted narratives are clearly not the “rational real”; they are their own reality, where all element is based on a myth or a legend, rural, urban, or merely from the artist’s own cumulative experiential reality. El-Siwi never abandoned his diaries as a reference for all his visual texts, where the slightest detail is documented in drawing or in literal text. To assimilate and extract –passionately– those details and use in his paintings are additional skills, acquired by long years of studio practice. The scholar within the artist proposes questions, while the artist within the scholar experiences the absolute pleasure of creating; both artist and scholar unite to create El-Siwi’s inspired personal narrative. Painted elements exist as if they have been dreamt of, and no conclusive evidence will ever be found to indicate that such creatures ever existed within the realms of reality. Viewers are obliged to explore their memories for similarities, traces of resemblance or prior knowledge of the visual elements proposed by El-Siwi, who, like a wizard, to the viewer’s surprise, consistently rearranges his elements to recreate a flux of meanings and innuendos, describing an entire life of memories, pure and absolute.

The Haunted Universe …

El-Siwi’s universe is a reflection of intimate experiential lived moments, one that combines talent, creativity and scholarship. The artist’s assimilation of folk fables, combined with his technical capacity, storm his canvases to transcend the sheer visual, attaining embedded core values; every fable is re-authored to simulate a comic strip. El-Siwi’s exquisite “schemata” blends the seen with the perceived, the real with the imagined, where he –himself—changes roles, from audience to protagonist and back, in a narrative that is not forcibly his at the start of the process, though in the painting endgame he turns author. El-Siwi improvises situations within invented scripts, where he dialogues with invented creatures at times, where fiction and reality are powerfully intertwined, in sounds, images, thoughts, and to complete the recipe: ghosts.

The Forgotten Fragment …

Melody set the scene then paves the way for the painted story, then all harmony is gradually abandoned; those are only instigators that ignite the creative process, yet should never overload the making of El-Siwi’s visual narrative, who is persistently adamant to formulate –among his creatures– an otherworldly alchemy of the contradictory forces of the implied versus the explicit, alongside the existential, the carnal forces of desire, ecstasy, the profane, on the road to emancipation from standard narratives and the rational real. The artist is emancipated from his own creation and creatures, whom he meets only briefly in occasional encounters, liberating them and himself, willingly and with pleasure, from any and all commitment. Perhaps, or certainly, what one sees in El-Siwi’s painted surfaces is not forcibly what he has seen as he paints. Once painted, the surface becomes a forgotten fragment, of a forgotten reality.

The Killer …

Created creatures are flooded at first with love from their creator, then the artist kills those at a later stage when their lifecycles have been completed, once he has thoroughly chased them, followed their emotional traces, hardships, as well as their sacrifices, across realms of time and space. The interactive struggle of the artist and his creatures are omnipresent on El-Siwi’s painted surfaces, and if one cannot find the eliminated creatures, one must sense their ghostly presence all over each painting, questioning the power-distance between reality and illusion as far as our very own existence is perceived. The artist in this case is torn between the forces of the real and the imaginary, denying her/him the position of an objective witness. For El-Siwi’s reality, there is an intense dose of fiction the engulfs his thoughts, and within the imaginary, there are loads of realities that drives his narratives. The painting practice is everywhere and nowhere in the weaving of the fable; the lines form traces that outline stories, all told to be forgotten.

The State of No Silence …

Stories are told since Adam and Eve on El-Siwi’s canvases, Science confronting the eternal Myth, drawing and painting drive all critical questions, disregarding right or wrong, and overlooking all definitive answers. In his painting practice of addition and elimination of elements, he creates imaginary parallel narratives integrating sacred and profane together, perceived myth, as well as perceived reality. The resulting aesthetic is unique yet confusing, particularly for the eternal creational Myth, as elements have been, through the vigorous and obsessive addition and elimination, been –embarrassingly– disrupted, and altered. The artist/scientist, as creator, is innocent of all ill-doing, while maneuvering his elements around the surfaces, creating, or fiendishly seemingly so, his very own myth. Like a scientist who dissects his organic elements, El-Siwi tie all souse ends and completes his narrative unexpectedly, yet proficiently so.

The Face … The Mask …

Adel El-Siwi may seem one of the greatest dreamers of the era, yet one can perceive him too as one of the greatest visual dream-breakers of all time. In Nostalgia, and seeking no easy solutions, the veteran artists, a gamer of old, offers his viewers no comfortable outlet for their viewing experience, taming their very own aspirations, dreams, and wishes for safe and sure encounters with spaces, long consumed. Liquid statesl of emotions linked with dreams are a trap, that magnetically attracts the artist towards detailed descriptive exits, safe, sure, and attractive. El-Siwi denounces the approach, and in his practice, he has always been outspoken about descriptive approaches: it is only a “mask”, hiding the core, and leaving only a vacuum of false predictions.

The Optimist …

One opts to trust the universe of Adel El-Siwi, who paints to exist, and believe in his narrative that created novel stories, happy as they go, painful at times. At times one could feel his physical presence, at other times, the artist disappears, while his very own creatures are omnipresent, and at all times, the story survives both. The optimist painter believes in painting as an existential reason and source to become, laying in a generous evergreen meadow within an alternative reality, inhabited by the artist, and the artist alone.

The Infinite Wealth …

Extracting and deriving his inspiration from a multiplicity of sources, El-Siwi’s sources are books, real time experiences, physical spaces, music, film culture, or other, and like all modernist scholars, he maintains the perfect middle between the creative persona tainted by Western exposure, and the down-to-earth Egyptian component of his identity with its cultural overload. Where he comes from, one could see the amount of self-development he endured to adapt, cope, and integrate his local-self to his international ecosystem; One could see his attempts to go faster than his very own era. This cumulative exposure and experience works to formulate visual –and sometimes literary– content, surprising and controversial at all times, scattering a diversity of personal elements, while defying symbology and codes.

The Rhythm-Maker …

Every maker has her/his tempo, habits, and her/his personal linkage to the craft: drawing and painting. Each time he is back with a large-scale project, El-Siwi appears on stage with a new style, in total liberation; to him, with issues of style: no strings attached. He combines available visual tools of expression with new imaginary self-created alphabets, to develop his surprising act, each time new, unrepeated in every aspect. One is almost certain while scrutinizing older works of the artist, that El-Siwi may not be able to-recreate the same feat, as he has abandoned that ship. Perhaps by adopting novel methods and styles, in his quest for surprises and frenzy for visual storytelling, he forbids himself, in respect of his very own scholarship and talent, from treading on the past.

El-Siwi thinks that literary meanings are trivial; painting and drawing are paramount; style is equally less important, and for that he leaps forward adventurously seeking new doors. There exists though a thread of character in the lines and the color that signifies El-Siwi and confirms his presence, before reading his signature. Perhaps it is the area between the visual and the narrative, mystical as it is, that characterizes this attribution, and the compelling specificity between the artist and her/his work.

Through his work, El-Siwi can lead any viewer into his studio blindfolded, both seeking elements behind every visual prose found hidden in every corner of his canvases, creating along the way the personal visual language, specific to each true creator.

The Drawing Lesson …

Priviliged is Adel El-Siwi; with a Egyptian Euro-Mediterranean heritage, he is able to start on an individual platform of painting practice, releasing creative energy derived from the wealthy genetic origins of the geographical space. His time is one with open skies, and shared spaces, where he dwelled and shared, thought and rebelled against, endured and enjoyed, laughed and cried, won and lost. Indeed, he is the protagonist of his own itinerary, his own film, his own life story, and generous that one was. Drawing and painting were never limited to a space or to a particular time; he had to be “it” everywhere and at all times, accepting the challenges of the craft, of Painting, who is an “alive entity” that could be a friend if you tame, and could at any time turn against the creator to be the roughest of all foes. Painting is a tough job, he believes; every work started is like holding a piece of lava, and every finished surface an achievement is hardly and rightfully attained.

This is Adel El-Siwi’s lesson in drawing, and in painting.