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In many
ways we might regard Ahmed Moustafa and the work of his studio as
an exemplary link between Islamic and European cultures. A conversation
with him soon reveals the ways in which his practical training and
experience as an artist and master scribe have been of crucial importance
in informing his doctorate research into the scientific foundation
of Arabic letter shapes. Underlying these activities is his strong
Islamic belief that enables him to create images of the most intense
complexity, which nevertheless can have an aesthetic and spiritual
appeal to those with little understanding of their meaning. Yet the
central core of his working life has taken place in Britain, something
he feels has been essential to his own innovative developments.
Moustafa is positioned between Europe and the Middle East, between
Greece and Africa, between Islam and Christianity. Indeed he would
locate his activity on a line that stretches back as far as Pythagoras,
and often makes wistful comparison between his status as an artist
and that of those Italian Renaissance artists whose images were firmly
based in a tradition of belief:
"Western art deals with the casual, rather than what I call the
immutable essence. As Michelangelo said: good painting is nothing
but a copy of the perfection of God."
Working from his recently established studio on Creekside in Deptford,
Moustafa and his team of highly skilled specialists pursue a range
of projects that extend his own enquiry into, and experiments with,
the Arabic letter shapes, which have led him on a 20-year journey
encompassing mathematics, philosophy, and geometry. It is a laboratory
as much as a studio, and Moustafa delights in describing himself as
a ‘scientist of the arts’. His studio space offers the
opportunity for testing and creating models of ideas and propositions,
debate, contemplation and verification.
Moustafa combines painting and silkscreen skills to a highly sophisticated
degree, whether he is working on canvas or paper. The reproductive
use of silkscreen becomes secondary to its ability to apply a particular
density and texture to the surface in the most controlled way. It
is the contrast between this almost mechanistic finish and the more
expressionistic use of the hand to create over and under-laying letter
shapes that gives the finished work such energy.
In order to deliver commissions for public buildings in many parts
of the world he has worked consistently with the Pinton studio in
Felletin-Aubusson to weave tapestries based on his paintings; likewise
a glass manufacturer in Germany to create stained glass panels for
a school in Jeddah. More recently a close collaboration with an Italian
company has produced a spectacular three-dimensional installation
of Moustafa’s seminal painting, The Attributes of Divine
Perfection.
Through every element of the studio’s output, however, there
runs the single determination to communicate, make connections with
people, open eyes and offer new ways of looking. The relationship
between apparently differing cultures has been consistently developed
in the work, which serves to exemplify ways in which future generations
might draw from each other’s visual heritage. Moustafa has identified
this as one of his central motives. |
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