'Charisma' explores the innately original and personal perspective that emanates from each of these artist’s works. Although each one stands alone in the form, subject and concept of their art, they are unified in their optimism, dynamism, and ultimately their artisitic abilities to provide a candid window into their expressive souls.
Kinda Adly is a self-taught artist who left a career in marketing to pursue her passion for art. Her paintings are inspired by pop art symbolism and the Japanese super flat concept, a postmodernist movement based on manga and anime. Her love for texture is clear in her painstaking, layering technique which combines different patterns with contrasting colors across multiple mediums. Kinda’s incredibly detailed and intricately worked canvases demonstrate a progression from the exclusively pop art style that gained her recognition. Since studying with esteemed talent Mohamed Abla, Kinda's composition presents as being less dense, opening her canvases to the added element of space. This shift in rigidity has allowed for a greater inclusion of Kinda's detailed plant and animal imagery, offering a more grounded and holistic appeal.
Khaled Abdo graduated from Alexandria’s Academy of Fine Arts with a degree in sculpture, however, his artistic career has since focused on abstract painting. Across his canvases, Abdo attempts to express his lived experiences by accessing his most engrained childhood memories. Abdo cites Alexandria, his home town as being his primary source of inspiration, whose contradictory nature he describes as “peaceful, intimidating and enigmatic". It is this very nature which materialises in Abdo's work; he succeeds at creating his own realms within the borders of his paintings, which he contends are an interpretation or reflection of living by the sea. To the individual, Abdo's canvases might resemble far-flung islands, mysterious underwater creatures and submerged ancient ruins or perhaps they are intentionally scrambled maps to a lost treasure. Compositionally, in this collection we see Abdo employ cryptic text to differentiate between and emphasize the segmented spaces of his canvas. It is here that Abdo augments a perspective of depth by using lines and colors superimposed on top of one another, partitioning the canvas in ways that captivate attention without appearing overcrowded or haphazard.
Tasneem El Meshad graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts Cairo and describes her art, as “a reflection of the chaotic world, and the dilemma of modern life, which revolves around juggling responsibility while trying to connect with the inner beauty of the universe.” Drawn to warm, strong, clear and compatible colors, reflecting her spontaneous character, Tasneem’s composition and the balance she creates amongst her works is exceptional. Her compositional style is a trademark refreshed interpretation of minimalist cubism, using this she partitions the canvas in a highly detailed and sensitive fashion that is as compatible as it is experimental and daring, attributing her works an almost 3D-level of depth. What sets her style apart is an innovative ability to communicate raw emotion using typical and otherwise mundane angular shapes, which she manipulates in ways reminiscent of some of the greats of the early 20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture.
