December 4, 2018 – October 11, 2019
FAROUK HOSNY
Abstraction
The fight in Farouk Hosny’s works undoubtedly belongs to Egypt—profound and faint, born of a gentle alchemy that combines the water of the Nile, the water of the sea, and the utterly parched desert.
But the transparency, the way of letting color rise and carry on the surface of other colors that serve as its support that is Hosny’s alone. He works like a poet, filling not just a space but a territory where the imaginary and the real blend in jouissance, indiscriminately producing colors, lines, scratches, mist, long lyrical sinuous lines, slick flat surfaces, brief exclamations, dazzling spatters.
This poetry does not add anything to the world. On the contrary, it toils to remove everything in the way in order to rediscover the essence of the visible.
Here is an apotheosis of painting that breathes deeply and through that motion becomes almost song. These works possess a fervor that, in the abeyance of passion, becomes contemplation. Are Farouk Hosny’s paintings gestural, hazy, formless, and lyrical?
Are they even altogether abstract? The artist, who knows all about these things, dismantles the “ isms” trap.
These paintings avoid elegance, just as they express mistrust of any overly perfect balance. They know how to hold every experience at a great distance from virtuosity, in a state of necessary indecision, improvisation, and risk. Generosity is behind them.
Michel Nuridsany
Le Carrousel du Louvre, Paris
Farouk Hosny was born in the Mediterranean town of Alexandria. Educated in Alexandria, Hosny graduated from the Alexandria Academy of Arts in 1964. After graduating he was appointed as the director of Anfoushy Cultural Palace in Alexandria and later moved to Paris as the cultural attaché in charge of the Egyptian Cultural Center. Hosny was honored at an early age to assume the prestigious position of handling the Egyptian academy of arts in Rome. Upon his great success in the Rome academy, he was chosen as the minister of culture of Egypt until his retirement in 2011.
Farouk Hosny is well known for his unique abstract style in art. Composed with exquisite balance, enigmatic imagery and a dynamic palette, Hosny´s paintings speak the language of the modern world. Through his use of abstraction, he transformed the eternal signs of his native country into restless, calligraphic gestures using vivid colors evocative of the Egyptian landscape: the blacks of sudden nightfall, the blues of sea water, the whites of limestone, the violets of the Sinai mountain range, the burning ochre’s of the desert, the green of the flowing Nile, the grays of ancient stones, and the oranges of flaming sunsets.
His works were exhibited in the most important museums, exhibitions and art centers in the world where he was introduced by the most important art critics including Jessica Winegar, Dan Cameron, Philippe de Montebello of the USA, Michel Nuridsany from France, Enzo Bilardello, Giovanni Carladente, Lorenza Troki and Maria Trenga Benedetti from Italy.
Farouk Hosny has won several international awards and his works have been exhibited in several museums worldwide including the Metropolitan Museum, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Fort Lauderdale in Miami, the National Museum of Vienna, Le Vittoriano Museum in Rome, Carrousel du Louvre in Paris, Tokyo Art Museum as well as several Arab and Egyptian Museums.