Abdalrahman Bsaiso : Dreams Eye-View and the Digital Art

“it was not for these dreams to become real and walk in the world’s spaces on two legs: equality and love, only to be turned into nightmares in which the face of a human being turns into a monster’s mask.”

Abdalrahman Bsaiso

Nearly two decades ago I heard the Artist Nabil El-bkaili demonstrating, with an impassioned vision, his understanding of the then new term “Digital Art”. This was in a discussion between us about the extent to which the digital revolution could revolutionise the fields of media and art, especially journalism and plastic art.

It was never possible for me to forget, at any subsequent moment or occasion in which the same question was raised, the substance of Nabil’s insights during that conversation. To my memory these became long paragraphs summarizing his vision and his quest to invest the fruits of the digital revolution, and the future of technology related to artistic design. His drawings, graphics and paintings reflect the sensitivity of time and pulse of life, belonging to the world’s culture by being deeply rooted in the reality and space in which it was created.

In that conversation, Nabil summed up his vision by concluding that it would not be possible for computer programmes and applications to marginalize the role of a creative artist, or to restrict an open, human imagination. Despite the story of new and advancing programs and applications, the means, methods and tools offered and dimensions that include unlimited components of physical objects, lines, forms, shapes, themes and colour variations, it could never be able, he said, to execute the unfettered human imagination.

El-bkaili has had a prolonged experience in creating unique and elegant digital paintings, a movement to which he, as a pioneer artist, has belonged from its inception. By tracking his vision and goal, El-bkaili and a few other Arab pioneers began to open new horizons and spaces for fine art. These horizons, spaces and prospects are new technological and digital ones. They enrich the fine art by enhancing the ability of the artist to embody the contents of his or her imagination, enabling him or her to pick up the poetic moment and turn it into an immortal signal that goes beyond the event. For being sensitive to the time of their creation, these digital paintings remain full of life and faithful to their reality.

Although philosophy has not yet crystallised the ‘digital’ concept of art either in western cultures or at a global level, the question of the influence of the digital revolution to art will demand answers. New tools will give birth, through conscious activation, usage and monitoring of performance, to newer and more efficient ones. These means will remain in possession of the artist and will continue to further the goal of immortalizing themselves in paintings.

But what has the eye of the artist seen in his homeland Lebanon, in the Arab and wider world that dictates the title of this book, “Dreams eye view’?

What is this viewing eye that scans pages and images of life, stores them, meditates on them in order to transform them into signs in the history of life and fine art? Were these really dreams as the title of the book suggests? Were they originally dreams, seen by the artist’s eye and his visionary imagination, abruptly turned into nightmares?

They were dreams of people who yearn to live in freedom and human dignity; dreams of love, peace, equality and justice; dreams of tolerance, coexistence and cooperation between all people who are members of one family called ‘humanity’.
But, again and again, it was not for these dreams to become real and walk in the world’s spaces on two legs: equality and love, only to be turned into nightmares in which the face of a human being turns into a monster’s mask.

These are visions that display, in a very different way, what we are seeing every day. These paintings invite us to reflect on the ongoing tragedies that occur in many different spaces in our one world. These paintings invite us to see and view, by our own eyes and as human beings still clutching the flame of their humanity, the crimes humanity commits against itself, and call us to identify its illness.

Abdalrahman Bsaiso
Critic and writer

Bratislava, 7 March 2016