Damascus-SANA
The young plastic artist Yazan Al-Gharawi attracted attention to him in the exhibition of graduates of the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus, which was held recently in the People's Hall, as their first launch into the plastic arena and their attempt to enrich it with their visions and contemporary philosophy.
Yazan’s graduation project reflects his attachment to ancient civilizations, especially the Syrian civilizations, which are full of stories, myths, influential personalities, and multiple languages and alphabets. He explained that in the last year of study, the research process began, which went through many experiences. He had a desire to embody women in the kingdom of Mary and Zenobia in Palmyra and many others, to If he was able to obtain a dictionary of myths and was attracted by the legend of Gilgamesh, he adopted it as an idea to build his graduation project.
He studied and weighed this epic with all its details and the stories of the characters in it and searched for translations of books that narrated its events and used the ancient and modern foreign language to reach the Arabic translation of the thinker Firas Al-Sawah and the basic translation of Taha Baqir, the Iraqi researcher and archaeologist who translated it from the cuneiform language, along with many other references that The epic was narrated in various ways, including the prose works on which it was relied upon in the advanced stages of the project.
Then Yazan, according to his expression to the correspondent of SANA, went towards sketches about the epic and the characters, and he thought about how to employ their influence in the paintings, as this epic influenced him, so he chose to embody it as sensual color blocks and merge it with the music of Abed Azaria.
Yazan extracted the colors that he used to form the paintings from the soil and combined them with a transparent acrylic resin medium to give the impermeable color and give a sense of antiquity through the bygone times.
He said: “In addition to the 22 paintings for the graduation project, I worked on integrating in an innovative way with a graphic design specialist through a composite video that displays fifteen drawings from the epic over a period of fifteen seconds, projected lightly onto a two-by-two-meter mural with a fixed background, to which I added music clips that woven into the epic.” And he combined it with the paintings and the surrounding environment, and isolated the room that embraced the project and gave it a yellow color, to finally give the feeling of entering a spiritual temple.”
Yazan also worked on designing a wooden book on which he wrote poetic verses by Gerges Nassif about Gilgamesh, and his goal was to leave an impact on the memory of the audience by drawing a dramatic line for the epic from the contemporary side with his own vision.
When asked about the difference in ideas and technologies between the generations of young people, veterans, and pioneers, Yazan considered that they are a lucky generation, as they have access to a wide range of research and experiences that they can view through the Internet and art books, in addition to contemporary experiences that they imbibed from the experiences of artists around the world and harnessed to serve their ideas in innovative ways in When the pioneers were experimenting individually, documenting these experiences, introducing the world to them, and benefiting from each other's experiences in extracting colors and other materials.
Yazan believes that the Syrian plastic movement is one of the most important artistic movements in the Arab world, and its history spans ages, from the experience of the artist Tawfiq Tariq to the art of modernity and the experience of the artist Fateh al-Mudarres, the post-pioneer generation, and the modern generation.
Regarding his upcoming projects, he is working on preparing new works to participate in exhibitions, and seeks to work on creating a contemporary method for introducing Arabic calligraphy in the design of posters in the field of graphics.
Amani Farooj
Follow SANA's news on Telegram https://t.me/SyrianArabNewsAgency