Fez- There was a time when there was no difference between the artisan, the craftsman performing the most menial tasks and the artist who devoted himself to art. It was the Amien, Simon Marmion, who in 1449 painted and gilded the weather vanes of a turret in a large dock. Marmion was a painter of pictures that contemporary criticism likens to Memling. Marmion was a manuscripts illuminator of sumptuous quality.
That was in the past! Today everyone claims to be an artist or artisan but nobody recognizes the craftsman. We all trust the anonymous work of mechanics and it is surprising that the resulting objects do not touch our personal lives. They simply lack out the human touch though they come out of human hand. They cannot maintain that indefinable thrill of life, supporting gouge or punctuating the route of the brush printed decisively to the most inert things. (Daniel Coutourier) It was this thought that came to Daniel Coutourier’s mind when he first stood before the so original work of Driss Oumami in 2007. El Oumami presented his work at the festival of contemporary art. He painted on animal skin which is a unique material in the community of other works painted on canvas or wood, or even plywood.
Driss El Oumami is of Berber origin, of Southern Atlas Mountains, land of his ancestors and a crucible of Morocco’s vernacular roots. Born in 1962 in Casablanca, today El Oumami is a decorator at television shows, designer and producer of models for buildings, residential edifices, ports, airports, exhibition stands, and artisan with an almost mystical respect. He considers art in its various manifestations knowing that the artist can convey a message of joy and culture, and better self-knowledge.
Daniel Coutourier proceeds by saying that Driss El Oumami instinctively reflects his art which is based upon an Amazigh family heritage. He maps out a path line for his works which he borrows without restraint or constraint because he knows he does not belong to any school or master. He venerates the traditional and looks down on the imitational. He rather innovates constantly especially taking into account the environment in which we, human beings, are immersed and using culturally-rich material. He creates his works by translating the needs and the gestures of his contemporaries, taking into account how the used material will evolve artistically.
The harmony of lines, the richness of the material and the work on the naturally- tanned skin leave a dominant artistic symbol. This sleek but noble simplicity is precisely the marking quality of El Oumami’s works. If the theme of work is meant to be modern, he processes his work manually. This embodies the artist character at the final work.
It is not a requirement to be a genius in order to have a high state of sense and sensibility. It is necessary, though, that thought should be consistent with the excellence of the sensory faculty. Only then as Leo Arnoult notes in "The work of art: the infinite and the perfect” that the artist’s intelligibility and moral order became full. It is irresistible taste that leads a perfect to a passionate idealist. They are qualities that the artist generally mixes with a creative imagination to be able to "take a fragment of the world, redesign and then make all possible and perfect."
Driss El Oumami is a simple but an aspiring man seeking the truth. His truth seeking quest is processed through technical procedure, construction and execution of his work. His masterpieces are characterized by a beauty of form and a color harmony. He acquired a style of beautiful form, subject only to a higher spiritual principle. His ornate style activates the assets of any judgment. Yet, style remains what impresses most among others professionals of art or even among those with sensitive taste to beauty and form.
Abderrahman Benhamza, equally, sees the work of Driss El Oumami as unique in the world of art. According to Benhamza, Driss El Oumami uses skin as an ideal receptacle for his pictorial language. The artist strives to keep the skin’s spectacular aspect. The skin, from El Oumami’s point of view, has no artistic limit. It preserves initial configurations and geography encountered during the preparation of work forms. The hair that covers the fleece, sometimes partially shaved, plays a major role in the color issue; its natural pigmentation is an integrated subject, which helps to define shapes and flow direction.
The coloration of the skin is performed to create an impressionist mode. Nonetheless, the process of coloration counts but little if the artist prefers the expression and movement. The tones have a complementary role; they derive their side features from an acquired celebration atmosphere.
El Oumami oversimplifies his topics and themes yet his artistic memory remains overloaded. His typical genre scenes target the development of a social aspect deeply- rooted in the Moroccan landscape; they maintain a constant dialogue with the roots, sometimes putting in relief character models, which the artist assigns a symbolic dimension.
El Oumami ensures adjusting the context of representations in relation to the present. He does not hesitate to raise high the banner of the Amazigh identity and ethnic paradigm that he integrates into the framework of his work respecting traditions. He enhances the rendering of visual elements such as kernels of the Argan tree, jacket buttons, and shards of traditional jewelry….etc. He makes a kind of "editing", sticking the material just mentioned to the skin and sewing these "recovered" elements. Successful contrasts and a sense of depth are raised to attention.
The art critic, Sheikh Abdullah, from his part described the exciting world of the colorist alchemist, Driss El Oumami as a universe both pictorial and scriptural which presents itself as a harmonious blend of form and tonality. This deep plastic sensitivity makes this artist a reference in contemporary Moroccan painting. His chromatic tones loaded with a naturalistic symbolism refer to a well-structured macrocosm that emanates from the inner nature of the artist.
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