Page 176 - Genius

raFat

lives and works in Düsseldorf, germany

SEARCH THE ARTIST ONLINE www.artactif.com/rafat-1

The german artist rafat Mey-Elahy inhabits a realm of magic that exists In an earlier show in the same venue, rafat Mey exhibited a work called
apart from the usual concerns of the mainstream art world. His is a fantastic “The Woman with Several Faces.”
realm filled with figurative enigmas and fanciful personages. Their costumes No quantitative distinction need be made between the two pictures,
constitute a kind of human plumage unknown to any earthly culture. Their however, for in the world of rafat two faces can be as extraordinary as
demeanor is as fully fanciful as the beings dreamt up by Paul klee, victor many, given the manner in which delicate strands of color converge to
brauner and other masters of anatomical anomalies. create images like nothing else in contemporary art. Suffice it to say that
the "Woman with Two Faces" is a sight to behold, with her ornate costume
All of rafat Mey's pictorial dramas are enacted against a black background - like something out of the Arabian knights by way of Saul Steinberg - and
that makes his colors glow all the more vividly, besides suggesting nocturnal her decidedly self-satisfied countenances.
atmospheres which add to the mystery of his compositions. In his recent
exhibition at Montserrat gallery, 584 broadway, in Soho, rafat Mey showed yet for all her strangeness, she is recognizable. We have all known
a group of works in paint on cardboard that continued and elaborated someone like her, and indeed this is what makes rafat Mey's paintings so
upon his fascination with the fantastically distorted human figure. The peculiarly enjoyable. No matter how outlandish his characters get, they
only painting in the exhibition with a title was "Woman with Two Faces”. bear a relationship to reality, as though he is delineating human psychology

 Hope, 1999 ACrylIC AND
gOUACHE ON CANvAS 40x27 IN. /
100x70 CM.
 Women WitH seVeraL
FaCes, 1990 ACrylIC AND gOUACHE
ON CANvAS 43x31 IN. / 110x80 CM.
 emBraCe, 1999 ACrylIC AND
gOUACHE ON CANvAS 40x27 IN. /
100x70 CM.
 FrUit DisH, 1999 ACrylIC AND
gOUACHE 30x23 IN. / 75x60 CM. 
176