The Unrepeatable Vision of Khaled
The art watcher of the work of creative artist, Khaled Al Maz, stands in front of unanswerable questions except from the artist himself about his own work. There is a strange united mutual and unrepeatable relationship between the artist’s feelings and the world that he doesn’t really live but creates in his paintings.
The one and only concern which never leaves his work is the subject. This subject focuses on women in their specialty as a mother, daughter, sister, friend, lover, and inspiration. It doesn’t really matter which, but it is the woman in her existence. It counts on the beauty, the giving, and what she truthfully owns. She needs the shape, touch, color, and in other words, Khaled plays with female body shapes, but on the canvas it is a very smooth material in his hands. He shapes women: standing, sitting, lying nested to other women or some friends, in regular forms, combined forms, or imaginative forms.
All these forms free the women. It doesn’t want her skin to be touched by anything but the colors that are given by Khaled. The female for Khaled is so simple; she keeps the unlimited space around her to care.
A space with no definition, for earth or sky is space, such as: gray, blue, and brown, green, yellow, and so on, with unlimited grades; that is, no limits until they reach the foggy grades. So we find his familiar subjects filling the painting’s surface within studied forms joined or scattered.
After finishing art studying in the fine arts college in Cairo, the Egyptian pharaoh influence was obvious through the repeated rhythm in movement or in the confined seats; or side face to face in time, and he leaves hands and feet or side face profiles to take a position as in a beautiful ornament.
During and after his residence in France, he was attracted to the artist who refused impressionism, specially to Fleger in his earlier stage. Where he begins simplifying the figure, deleting the volume and filling the space around with the essential elements, then he can be satisfied with the surface and the changing colors which enables experience for the one who hasn’t lived it.
Khaled deals with surfaces in figures, not with the lines, especially in his latest work where the females become more rounded and have more volume, focusing on the mainmast, that is the body, the head, simplifying the hands and feet, and concealing a lot of face and body details as if they are bodies roaming in a misty, foggy world. Like the remaining masses; like ghosts roaming in space though they might be seated or moving. What really catches the eye is the contrast between the heavy human mass of the body and the conic feet holding it, still in quiet color and carefully considering the color.
Khaled deals with surfaces in figures, not with the lines, especially in his latest work where the females become more rounded and have more volume, focusing on the mainmast, that is the body, the head, simplifying the hands and feet, and concealing a lot of face and body details as if they are bodies roaming in a misty, foggy world. Like the remaining masses; like ghosts roaming in space though they might be seated or moving. What really catches the eye is the contrast between the heavy human mass of the body and the conic feet holding it, still in quiet color and carefully considering the color.
Whatever the color is, it is on a flat surface with the confirmed touches of anatomy, which shows in a strange feeling and exotic life which might be a shadow or strong lighting.
The art of painting is in the wealth of coloring showing Khaled as a professional master.
Though his colored paintings might be foggy, he knows he has to take advantage of adding light effects in very sensitive and important parts, such as the hands, feet, face, and chest, where they can really indicate full control of a useful touch of sparkling color. Doing this he adds life to his art work. He makes his work dazzle in between the colors. He makes his work united in the shapes, elements, and colors.
In all that (especially in his latest work) Khaled tends to have some metaphysics – romantic metaphysics: a space or empty space as wide as in the theater. He is well aware of how to put human elements on deaf canvas and color in a cold and quiet fogginess, with some hot lightning here and there. This is how he takes his work (and us) to his own private world.
So where is he headed to next?
Mamdoh Kashlan
