To deal with the painting as an entity of layers superimposed on top of each other, and to move from one layer to another, as this requires a special process in which the formation becomes a kind of drilling between these separations. This is what the Egyptian artist Ahmed Farid chose in his exhibition, which was titled “Collision”, and he continues Until the first of next month at Safar Khan Gallery in Cairo.
The title does not refer to the rudeness that characterizes our modern life, as much as it reminds of its contradictions, as it is on the one hand highly technical and people in it are mere isolated subjects who rarely meet one another. However, on the other hand, these selves often internalize an unfriendly attitude, and thus the first signs of crowding and tension appear that pave the way for the painting of its original theme.
As is the case with any gradient process, Fred’s painting moves little by little from the initial crowding thresholds to denser ones, and so on until the elements and layers of the painting reach a peak of collision.
However, the journey from the first point to the next, to the center, takes a lot of effort. It does not aim to display the amount of conflicting and dissonant ideas in today’s world, but rather depicts places, landmarks, buildings, and bodies as well, even if they appear as a group in an extreme state of miniatures, or despite the fact that abstraction pulls all of the above towards forms in which interpretation is more correct than disclosure.
Colliding colors also penetrate the boundaries of each other, do not stop at a straight line, and their rapid movement contributes to giving the painting its distinct layers. Likewise, the elements of each class do not accept to sit in their place, but rather try to migrate to the total center.
Are we in front of a contemporary city or a whirlpool? Or maybe we went back to detailing the atomic movement, where the nucleus and those around it are infinitesimal particles.
