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| Artist' Statement |
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| Is it possible to faithfully translate the elements of visual art into words? How then is one to encompass a visual artist's thoughts and creations into a statement? Self-awareness requires the ability to imagine and dream, especially to a person engaged in the process of artistic creation. To articulate in words a visual aesthetic experience is to script the dream and border the reach of the image. No longer would the forms come to life, nor would the colours convey the complexities of the visual field. As an artist, I primarily work with Oil on canvas, as well as mixed media sculpture. I often apply a vocabulary of interlocking geometrical motifs originating in Islamic art to the representational realm of figurative art. This fusion of Islamic and Western approaches imparts a sense of guided movement conferring urgency and physical involvement, and heightens the element of spatial depth. A painting or a sculpture generated through this combination have a vivid impact even at a distance, yet engages the viewer in an intimate visual and intellectual experience. My desire is to communicate a coherent unity of concept and percept by bringing the viewer's unique experience to a set of integrated elements. These elements include textures, lines of tension, and tactile memory. |
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| To a painter, sight is by far the dominant sense of perception. That fact brings about the question of how a preconceived idea of an objects' appearance can mask the true nature of what is being looked at. Sight is an active process of construction shaped by a lifelong practice of visual anticipation. Our visual perception is also self-editing, as when viewing a shape approximating a square with a missing corner, the mind is compelled to fill in the gap and correct the 'error' we see. In other words, if something is missing from an otherwise complete figure we add it in to complete the picture. A memory is pre-configured to contain the visual information it receives as an integrated whole, creating a map of the experience synonymously structured as the experience itself. Subsequently, upon exposure to some of its parts, we recall previously conceived ideas and re-enact familiar patterns of thoughts as to what we see - (early astronomers gazing at the night sky found it easier to see figures and animals as opposed to random stars.) If when viewing a painting we are confronted with irrational visual cues, we become confused as to what is perceptually correct. Subsequently, normal patterns of reasoning are interrupted forcing us to seek novel approaches to meaning truer in nature to the object itself. In utilizing elements of irrationality and paradoxes as is the case with surrealism, it is possible to inhibit the self-editing aspects of our perception. A paradox can be defined as a union of opposites operating simultaneously in the perceptual field. Visual paradox and ambiguous shapes reside at the boundary confining our constructs of rational reality. Thus surrealism emerges as a gateway to a broader understanding of the human condition. An individual is to a great extent an architect of the habitual self. However, visual paradox affords us the chance to transcend repetitive preferences of the mind, and break our recursive progression of thought. |
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| Artist Mohamed Hagelamin is a native of the Nile Valley. The artist was born in Alexandria, Egypt and he is a self-taught painter and sculptor working primarily in oil on canvas, and mixed media sculpture. His works are among private collections in Canada, Egypt, and in France. He exhibited in various locations including: Spence Gallery, Toronto; the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto; Centre for creative studies, Kings College, London; University of Western Ontario; Harbourfront Centre, Toronto; Kukulu Gallery, Toronto; and the Junction Arts Festival in Toronto. |
| Thoughts from the Studio |
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| PARADOX On surrealism, recursive seeing, and crisis of the object. |
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| "Coffee Machine" Oil on canvas, 36"x36" |
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| "Hunter" 36"x36" Oil on Canvas |
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| Biography |