Ibrahim El-Salahi: Calligraphic Forms

Vigo Gallery is pleased to present Calligraphic Forms, an exhibition devoted to one of the most important and enduring strands of Ibrahim El-Salahi’s seven-decade practice: the transformation of the written mark into image, figure and form.

At the heart of the exhibition is the extraordinary nine-panel Calligraphic Forms III / Alphabet 3 (1989), one of the most resolved and important black-and-white works of El-Salahi’s career. Composed of nine individual sheets, each measuring 45.1 × 45.1 cm, the work forms a near-perfect square measuring 135.3 × 135.3 cm. It is simultaneously fragmented and whole: each panel retains its own integrity while forms flow between them and accumulate into a larger image.

For El-Salahi, this was not simply a formal exercise. Speaking about the work in Oxford in 2015, he explained:

“This grouped work represents my understanding of the relationship that exists between the particle and the whole, that of the individual human being with the higher relationship between the created and the creator.

That is why this work means a lot to me. It represents the summing up of my experimentation with the set symbol of Arabic calligraphy at the time. That came after a long period of experimentation of inclusion of Arabic calligraphy, of the symbol, in my work. I think at that time I managed to free the script characters and forms to their original form: human, animal, plant, sound, cosmic shapes etc. Also at that time I found it necessary to bring it back as near as possible to its visual human form. So it’s just a matter of returning the set symbol to its origins.”

The dual title of the work, Calligraphic Forms III / Alphabet 3, is significant. It connects the work to an exploration begun almost thirty years earlier. Alphabet No. 1 (1960) is in the collection of Princeton University Art Museum; Alphabet No. 2 (1968) belongs to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. In Calligraphic Forms III / Alphabet 3 (1989), El-Salahi returns to this exploration almost three decades after it began, before taking it forward again in Alphabet No. 4 (1992), now in the Kamel Lazaar Foundation collection.