This self-taught sculptor and painter exhibits in a gallery in southern Sarthe, “I like sculpting faces”

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Already came to present his soapstone sculptures (from soapstone), five years ago at the Nocogo Gallery in La Chartre-sur-le-Loir (Sarthe), Mahmoud Khayri returns with new worksfor an exhibition from October 26 to November 14, 2024.

Sculptures are in place, but also paintings on slate, compositions on canvas or even collages and casts. A bright and varied set.

From the edge of the Nile to Europe

Although very discreet, he recounts his journey: “I was born in Egypt, in Aswan. Very young, I was 13 or 14, I was attracted by the sculpture that a craftsman made. He agreed to train me in his workshop. I presented my first wooden works at the French Cultural Center in Aswan. But then I stopped sculpting to work in tourism in Egypt. I didn’t do any more exhibitions; nor sculpture for 20 years. I arrived in Paris in 2002, I was 22 years old. I followed sculpture classes in a workshop in the city of Paris. In 2018, I met Jacques Auxenel and Annie Chaplin by chance. I showed them my sculptures and they offered to come and exhibit them at the Silo, in Montoire. A cultural place that they managed at that time. This exhibition won success. Our collaboration began then. I first exhibited in France, notably here, at Nocogo in 2019, then in Belgium in Brussels in 2020, and this year in Ireland, where I was in residence.

A self-taught career

Self-taught, Mahmoud Khayri sculpts in addition to soapstone, alabaster, granite and wood.

Its forms are both abstract and semi-figurative.

He explains: “I am attracted to people’s faces that I come across or meet. I like sculpting faces. However, I do not represent the person as he is, but son expressionas I feel it. I sculpt his interior landscape. I work with this very soft stone which is often white in appearance at first, but which can be of different colors. The one I use comes from quarries in Germany. I work it with a wood rasp, then with sandpaper and finally, I wax it. But I also paintparticularly on acrylic slate plates. I also make paintings, a bit similar to sculpture since they are in volume. Or with aluminum foil that I crumple and then paint gold. I also work tufa powder with glue and a comb, or even fabric that I model, in various shapes. I work to earn my living in Paris, where I live in a very small studio, but I have a workshop in Trôo, where I have more room to sculpt and paint.”

Mahmoud Khayri’s sculptures have a particularity.

He always leaves part of the raw stone, which gives the impression that the face emerges from the material, as it was originally.

A sort of birth, of apparition.

“Return from Ireland” exhibition until November 14 at the Nocogo Gallery.
Information on 06 40 40 71 05.

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