Mourad Elloumi - Art Is an Option in Life, but Also a Daily Struggle, in the Face of Inconvenience, Controversy, and Uncertainties (Artist From France)

My artistic career is built to remain stable since I am a Professor and a painting workshop animator I can have stable financial resources, but as an artist painter the situation is unstable, it depends on several external factors, for example, the covid health crisis lowered my income due to the lack of exposure. It made me feel like I needed to work better on social media.

Tell us more about your background and journey.

From an early age, I regularly participated in cultural events, drawing, painting, theater, cinema, when I finished my studies of visual arts at the University of Art, Architecture, and Urbanism of Tunis, I started by training young people in painting clubs. 

In 1988 I landed in the world of education as a Professor and devoted myself to teaching visual arts and started my professional life as a painter, I had the opportunity to do several exhibitions around the world ( Italy- the United States- Tunisia- France) Thus, these different experiences allowed me to develop my art and innovate a new artistic concept, the & sur- realism”, which is an assembly of human diversity through a multi perspective spatio-temporal perception capable of reinventing new artistic expression, it is the result of a vast and eternal ballad in the umpteenth dimension of human consciousness.

Now, I can say that Art allowed me to become a citizen of the world and no longer of a single nation or culture.

When did you decide you wanted to be an artist?

In 1988, I landed in the world of education as a Professor and dedicated myself to teaching fine arts.

From that moment I started my professional life as an artist painter, I had the pleasure of doing a lot of exhibitions around the world, I have understood that Art is not only painting objects, places, and stories, but it is putting beauty in minds, lighting fires, and presenting futuristic or prospective visions in order to awaken populations sometimes hypnotized. This is the real power of art, the power to reinvent the future.

Is it a financially stable career?

My artistic career is built to remain stable since I am a Professor and a painting workshop animator I can have stable financial resources, but as an artist painter the situation is unstable, it depends on several external factors, for example, the Covid health crisis lowered my income due to the lack of exposure. It made me feel like I needed to work better on social media.

Today and more than ever, we, artists, must adapt our working methods to the evolution of life and seize the opportunity to make virtual exhibitions.

Who is your favorite painter/artist and why?

I do not have a favorite painter nor an artistic movement, all painters are my favorites, from Di Vinci and Caravaggio to Warhol and Picasso, via Kandinsky and Matisse, each artist owes his success to previous experiences. I believe in the continuity of art and creation.

What is your inspiration for creating art?

I am inspired by one of the great mysteries of this universe shown through the existence of opposite things, contrasting and contradictory whether they were human, physical, or metaphysical. I am seeking, within the limits of a bi-dimensional canvas, to achieve links between the present and the past, between distant spaces, and connect the many pairs of opposites that coexist in us and in the universe.

My eternal subject is stated through the means of gathering all the inconsistencies, bringing together all the differences, and rearranging all forms. That’s how I started expressing the possibility of bringing everything together and joining this experience to Andy Warhol’s idea that “the most exciting attraction is between two opposites that never meet”. Creation seems to lie in the general laws of contrasts.

My approach does not only seek to look at the temporal space but also to express a larger image in time and space from a more retrospective panoramic perception. I am aiming at recreating a new informal reality more involved than the present moment. I am greatly influenced by the emotion inspired by nature with its pairs of opposites, its beauty and ugliness, strength and weakness, joy and sadness … Observers may devote a moment to considering the new relationship between these different forms, colors, techniques never brought together.

                   

What piece of advice would you like to give to future aspiring artists?

Art is an option in life, but also a daily struggle, in the face of inconvenience, controversy, and uncertainties. Have the courage and the strength to believe in your abilities and you will be successful.

Which is your favorite book and why?

“A plea for the Manifesto of new sur-realism”. Maybe because it offers another artistic conception. This is my artist’s book, a theoretical and experimental presentation of a new concept.

Since prehistoric painting, the pictorial image has moved in multiple directions through the exploration of different dimensions. Today, what interests me in the question of temporality and its relationship to artistic work, are the possibilities of broadening and increasing the fields of analysis and vision of time and space by as fundamental data of human perception, to multiply times and spaces as narrations

related to the technique of representation and construction of plans.

Anxious to reweave the links between the present and the past, to join distant or different spaces, to connect the many pairs of opposites that coexist in us and in the universe, to overcome ethnic antagonisms, ideas, minds, doctrines, and classes between peoples, I have allowed myself to develop the image of the temporal towards another umpteenth dimension, it is a way of mixing the sensitive with the intelligible.

As a thought, “sure-realism”, is invoked to defend the legitimacy of cultural diversity, to question cultural globalization which affects the capacity for the socialization of all existing cultures, to thwart the concomitant development of based identity communities. on a rejection of relativism and on the affirmation of the superiority of one culture over others, to finally live in dignity and reject the emergence of a common culture that threatens indigenous peoples. « Sure- realism » would then be a reaction to the complete drift of the concept of postmodern art.

Sure-realism is quite simply an assembly of human diversity through a multispective Spatio-temporal perception capable of reinventing new forms, it is the result of a broad and eternal ballad in the infinite dimension of human consciousness.

Interviewed by - Yashika Khanna

Bio

MOURAD ELLOUMI, international artist-painter, born 27 - 6 - 1961, graduated from the National Institute of Art, Architecture, and Urbanism of Tunis in 1986.

He is the author of the Artbook: The Manifesto of the new sure-realism “Mixing the sensitive with the intelligible”

- Honored by the appreciation of his artistic profile of the ART TRAFFIC certifications (“Start”, “Certified”, “Certified Master” and “5 Year Guarantee”) associated with the international site WeDigArt.

-He has done several exhibitions all over the world, He has been invited to several international events and exhibitions, Rome, New York, Miami, San Diego, Los Angeles, Dubai, Tokyo, Florence, Mantua, and the Metropolitan Gallery Art Museum in Las Vegas.

-He is honored by the publication of his art in a large volume of Anthologies d’Art, the & “Important World Artists II”.

He was selected as an international artist at the “Circle Foundation for the Arts” for the CFA Artist of the Year.

-He won an “Honorable Mention Award”, awarded by the “Circle Foundation for the Arts” for the high aesthetic, technical and creative level of the new form of artistic expression of “sur-realism”.

- His work is included in several art books including “The 100 artists of the future”.

- He received 4 artistic distinctions: “Certificates of artistic merit” awarded by the Luxembourg Art Prize for the years 2016-2017-2018-2019 in recognition of the efforts made to participate in the selections of the mentioned editions.

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