A 'maleta' full of collages - impish, poetic and critical.

Byline: Florence Thireau

Summary: The first page of Sean Mackaoui's website represents a little man manipulating scissors with dexterity. After a moment or two, the same animated character reappears, seated on what could be a helicopter whose propellers are made of scissors. This introduction to Mackaoui's work could sum up both his practice and his artistic spirit.

Review

BEIRUT: The first page of Sean Mackaoui's website represents a little man manipulating scissors with dexterity. After a moment or two, the same animated character reappears, seated on what could be a helicopter whose propellers are made of scissors. This introduction to Mackaoui's work could sum up both his practice and his artistic spirit. Scissors are his essential work instrument. The collages he creates with them - composed from what seem banal and incongruous newspapers, advertisements and magazine cuttings - always manage to evoke a greater significance than the elements that comprise them.

Born in Switzerland in 1969 to a Lebanese father and an English mother, the artist has been traveling his entire life. He spent his childhood in Beirut and his teenage years in England, where he discovered the work of surrealist German painter and sculptor Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948).

Among Schwitters' works exhibited at that time, Mackaoui was particularly intrigued by the artist's collages, made of everyday objects - bus tickets, pieces of public notices, buttons, bits of rags and tissues, cigar-ends.

"I wanted to be a photographer," Mackaoui says. "but I realized that collage was a fascinating and poetic medium, full of artistic possibilities."

At the beginning of the 1990s, he started working as an illustrator for an impressive number of publishing houses and magazines. These included such national and international publications as Vogue Spain, El Pais and The Courrier International. His work has also appeared in alternative websites like monografico.net.

Recently, the walls of the Madrid metro were covered with one of his latest works. Commissioned by the Spanish National Drama Center, this collage illustrates Shakespeare's most-famous play, "Hamlet," with a giant bell molded in the shape of a skull.

Mackaoui has been living in the Spanish capital for 15 years. It was there, he says, that he discovered "visual poetry," through the work of Catalan artist Joan Brossa (1909-99). Known primarily as a poet and playwright rather than a visual artist, Brossa's experiments with neo-surrealism and neo-Dadaism made him influential among Spain's post-Civil War avant-garde. As in Brossa's work, Mackaoui considers form a priority. His work is plastic and concrete and often mingles poetry, installation and word-play.

In his 2008 collage "La Plage" ("The Beach"), for example, a woman's swimsuit is actually made of octopus tentacles, but her shadow doesn't match the shape of her body.

If Mackaoui's inspirations have been evolving over the years, the basic materials and the technique he uses - the traditional cut and paste method - never has. "I like illustrations from '50's and '60's magazines for the quality and unrealistic aspect of their colors, and also because I want to use images that people don't recognize," Mackaoui says.

"I scanned thousand of pictures and classified them into thematic files." These files feature hundreds of blonde women, modernist houses, machines or old-fashioned car pictures cut and now awaiting assembly by the artist.

Beirut's Cervantes Institute is exhibiting 20 of Mackaoui's latest collages, all specially created for this show. Most obviously, Mackaoui's work refers to pop art.

He's an admirer of Richard Hamilton's collages, especially his famous 1956 piece "Just what is it that makes today's home so different?" which uses common symbols of consumer culture, both low-cost and glamorous materials. His combinations of images are not optimistic in the manner of pop art, but often critical, unexpected, precise, minimalist and humorous.

As in the work of American sculptor and printmaker H. C. Westermann (1922-1981), Mackaoui's collages can be scathing commentaries on militarism and materialism. In the collage "La Isla" (2009), for example, Mackaoui has glued a picture of a woman in a swimsuit, jumping from a diving board onto the deck of a nuclear submarine, creating a "malaise."

If Mackaoui often kidnaps innocent images from vintage magazines and diabolically turns them on their heads to convey political irony, he also likes to create surrealist landscapes and humorous combinations.

"Some of my collages intend to make the spectator laugh," Mackaoui says. "An exhibition room full of laughing people would be a great compliment." His humor often stems from contradictions between the title of the collage and the matter of the collage itself. In "Paris" (2009), for example, the artist uses a photo of Beirut, crossed by a giant female body.

This humor also refers to Dadaist artists, who used to write on their exhibition entrance tickets "free entrance, easy exit, painting under the arm." Mackaoui often refers to Marcel Duchamp. Like him, he reused the "Mona Lisa" in his collage "La concubina de Mutt" (2007), having her wear a Japanese mask.

While preparing this Beirut exhibition, Mackaoui chose to create a few collages referring to his childhood in the Lebanese capital. "I used to watch a lot of 'Z-rated' movies. I loved Hamra's theaters," Mackaoui explains. "El Mundo Perdido"(2009), a collage in which dinosaurs destroy a city, is a reference to these movies and an homage to the Beirut of his childhood, which doesn't exist any more.

Another collage represents an airport cart, carrying a head. "La Maleta"(2008), as it's called, evokes what we bring with us when we leave a country - our memories and also our old selves, which is now lost. It is an experience Sean Mackaoui has known many times. It is also the reason he choose this collage as this exhibition's signature piece.

"La Maleta" is up to the Cervantes Institute, Rue Maraad, until April 4. For details call [phone].

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