Lot 266: - Rafik El Kamel , B. 1944 Transfiguration acrylic on canvas

signed and dated 2000 acrylic on canvas

measurements note 114 by 146cm.; 44 7/8 by 57 1/2 in.

Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner in 2000

Rafik El Kamel's work is more than simply the transformation of matter into painting, of reality into an Abstraction; it is a Transfiguration. Appearing first in the work of this celebrated artist in 1987, the Transfiguration series characterises the artist's quest of the past forty years, in his attempt to transcend the opposition between figuration and abstraction. For Rafik El Kamel, to transfigure does not mean changing one figure into another, but rather to metamorphose the figure, to give it an undefined identity, becoming simultaneously a figure and a non-figure. The present work Transfiguration demonstrates the consequences of accidents and catastrophes, modifying the surface of the painting. Windows of luminous colour that reveal this drawing technique are juxtaposed with blocks of dark paint, visual black holes empty of spirit of humanity. It is this tenuous dialectic between drawing and matter that delivers the artist's canvas. There is an orchestrated interplay between lines and texture through collage and free drawing, which could be described as automatic writing.

Creasing, crumpling, shifts and detachments energise the shapes alongside thin red and blue lines reminiscent of waves- a final reminder of the earlier cataclysm. Inexplicable, undefined elements appear to exist in a state of perpetual transformation. Painting in all its plasticity thus asserts its autonomy, not only from pictorial academic conventions but also from our own regard. Painting, therefore, is neither aping the real, nor interpreting it. Here it is the birth of what is real: a primordial soup of colour, shape and dynamic. To transfigure is to bring about a renaissance, to improve, to dazzle; through a glittering new beauty, an unusual brightness. In the same way that these luminous shapes enhance the monochrome background of the canvas, so does a transfiguration transform the real and the norm to a fantastic beauty. Rafik El Kamel belongs to the second generation of the Ecole de Tunis. His expertise in both the figurative and abstract practice of painting, places him in the pantheon of other modern artists such as Mark Rothko and Nicolas De Stael.