CAIRO.- Many of the visitors to Mutaz Elemam’s vernissage could not have been blamed for thinking they were going to see an exhibition of self-portraits.

Judging from the title of the show , “SELFIE”, the twenty-first century self-defining mode of expression in the smart phone era , anyone would have been led to assume that as well.

Luckily , Elemam is no narcissistic , self-absorbed , navel-gazing exhibitionist , but a serious artist toiling away at his work and engaged in a continuous and committed process of self-reflection and self- assessment .

Never before in the history of mankind have our lives been so saturated with “images” . Prompted by the sweeping use of mobile phones and social media , abetted by all the tools of technology at our fingertips, we manipulate, photo-shop and super-stylize them in the hope of projecting a “perfect” picture to the world.

Consciously or not , we are documenting every bit and every moment of our lives and crystallizing it in an image that has substituted dialogue and verbal exchange.
We live in an intrusive anti-reflective world where visual information is packaged and hurtled at us aggressively before we even have time to process it cognitively and assimilate it rationally.

This brings up the pertinent question of “how to read a picture?” : how to analyze it , what information do we get out of it , how does it stir us , what does it prompt us to do, is it beautiful , ugly, blasphemous ,balanced or well composed ?

Far from the “corrosive” effects of the internet , in his current show entitled “Selfie” , Mutaz Elemam turns the mirror on himself and goes on an introspective journey to re-examine his cultural and philosophical understanding of life and gives us his own visual interpretation through this new body of work.

“These are equally vital and essential processes be they to the composer , the artist or the writer ” , he says about self-reflection and analysis , “ because they are important learning skills, much more important than talent itself .”

“Good artists work and re-work those skills to a point where they seamlessly blend with the act of painting, drawing and creating ; this is how an artist preserves his own sense of self.”

Yet, basic as it may be , this act of meditative self-examination seems to be overlooked by so many artists.

The paintings evoke mental and spiritual landscapes and although his work is by its own nature quite intuitive it is nevertheless strongly cerebral and analytical.

Elemam plays with what he calls “inverted perspective” , and this he achieves through his use of line and application of colour whereby some of his works appear as if they should be turned upside down ; a blue sky under a floating imaginary island and a blazing setting sun in the centre point of a picture, teapots and goblets floating suspended above a table , and then , there are the seated-floating-semi-recumbent bodies…

Two additional important points regarding technique he is keen to emphasize ; the way he applies his paint in layers and glazes, the cumulative effect of which gives the picture its overall unity , and his concern about the “treatment or handling “ of light in his canvases . Where other artists would apply the lightest colours last , Elemam’s first preoccupation is that the light should filter through the canvas from the depth of the picture and so he “handles the light” first , this is what ultimately gives his works the shimmering surface and the impression of being “back-lit “.

Evidently, he underscores the fact that artists are not just makers of images ; they are critical voices and commentators engaged in a perpetual dialogue and a journey that reflects the Zeitgeist of their time.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez once said that “ the job of a writer is the only one that becomes more difficult the more you do it ”, one could argue that the onus weighs equally on artists on their perpetual journey in search of a pictorial language that can give a lasting voice to their images.

“Selfie” is Mutaz Elemam’s visual soliloquy , an introspective journey in a shifting temporal world.

“Selfie” is currently showing at Cordoba Gallery in Cairo, Egypt until the 19th of February 2015.