Table II Print

This painting is a synthesis of my thesis work at college some 6 years ago and a subsequent abstract work I was making starting from 2015 till recently. The new series, which I’ll call “Beijing series” (taking over “Cairo series”), started when working on a mural for my girlfriend’s office in Beijing, I decided to introduce straight lines into my abstract work characterized by white unpainted outlines surrounding shapes, which are combinations of two colors. It is this introduction of order that made me come back to a representational subject matter, although in fact the subject has not changed, because the actual subject of all those works starting from the thesis has been the unpainted outlines. I have always underlined that the objects are there only to indicate their non-importance. In my thesis work the realism of the painting distracted from this idea, which is now much more apparent. There was also a problem of separation between the background and the foreground. Now this problem disappears, because the foreground and the background are practically the same, it’s only the arrangement of the shapes and hence the white outlines which make the object visible. This brings me back to the idea of the object and its triviality. Sure, a table can mean many different things, depending on a person, their history, background, culture, etc. However, it is always the past of the person that makes up the meaning of this table for them. Without past it is just an arrangement of shapes and colors and is not different from its background or other paintings with different objects. The actual difference here is the difference between the painted and the unpainted surfaces, and it is this contrast that makes the work what it is. The lines are what connects all the shapes together, but the lines are distinguishable only while the shapes or colors exist. Once the shapes are gone, the background becomes one, but its use is also over.