In Cordoba Gallery, 3A Degla St., Mohandesin, Egypt, until February 15, 2015.
Alone, 2011.
About Mutaz Elemam
2010.
Mutaz Emam is a Sudanese artist born on 1979. He graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Khartoum, Sudan. He is a full time artist and volunteer teacher of drawing and coloring to children, which is a part of his experience in using art and painting in psychotherapy of victims of war at the Grace Child Care Center in Khartoum.
Dream, 2015.
“Some years ago at the height of the economic boom, when auction houses were raking in phenomenal profits and artists were parading like prima donnas and rock stars, I asked Mutaz what he thought was the biggest challenge to an artist. Without missing a heartbeat and in one long breath he answered:
“The most daunting thing a painter has to face is the blank canvas!
It is your master and your tamer, your mentor and your coach, your battleground and your storm, it can equally whip you into shape and callously break you, it will challenge your skills and sharpen your mind and yet, in spite of it being your experimental laboratory it is also your meditative ground, it is your focus and your magnet, it is your compass in a storm and it is also the field where you will sow the seeds of new ideas and the springboard of your imagination.
So the artist must be meek and he must approach the canvas with utmost respect and mindfulness; the onus is on him to deliver the unbridled and unaffected truth.”
Untitled, 2014.
I first met Mutaz about a decade ago and his vision has not wavered once from that statement.
He has had numerous collective and solo exhibitions, two of which I have had the immense pleasure of curating; to date this body of work entitled “CMYK” is the one that distills and crystallizes what he really believes in- Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key.
Untitled, 2014.
In it he addresses the most pertinent and pressing question and asks both the artist and the public to reconsider: what is art really all about? And like the primary subtractive colours this too is about going back to first principles; it is about the responsibility bestowed on the artist to communicate truthfully through his work, and that expected from the spectator to assimilate it without prejudice, it is about building bridges of tolerance and understanding, it is about listening and dialogue.
“As an artist I am no more than a tool to communicate this message, by preparing the “terrain”, by focusing and centering my thoughts I can then execute the work to the best of my mental and physical abilities and once the work is done the next stage starts and that is how the onlooker receives and interprets it”.
