Iris El Ayoubi at Bridgewater/Lustberg - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

This present to view was a tribute to Iris El Ayoubi, an American artist who died in an auto accident in Paris sum of two units years ago at age 50 It featured 23 collages, frottages and works upon paper, most produced in her last years and at no time before exhibited.

El Ayoubi's work is related to a tradition of Dada collage stemming from Schwitters and carried upon in the work of Hannelore Baron, among others. El Ayoubi shared with these artists a penchant for compositions that use words and alphabetic characters in striking arrangements full of conceits and subtle humor. For the greatest in quantity part, she steered away from figurative, Surrealist collage techniques exhibited by Ernst and practiced by means of many of her contemporaries.

Since 1982El Ayoubi showed intimist collages that are personal and seemingly diaristic. They demonstrate a delicate touch and a nuanced approach to color, materials and, above all, language. In the 5-by-8-inch collage Chinese novel Year, for example, the artist attached little strips of bright r tissue paper and fragments of Chinese true copys to a pale pink paper background. In spite of its wispy, frail appearance, the collage has the intense luminosity of a Chinese lantern and manages to summon a spirited celebration the tide suggests

Another work, Penguins Unabridged, present to views El Ayoubi's lyric sense. This composition in ceruleans and greens balances numerous discordant element-torn bits of back overlays from Penguin and Pelican works that list titles of novels in print, a company logo (an outline of a pelican in flight), postage stamps and the alphabetic characters "AA" in a green, blocky typeface that gaze like part of the American Airlines logo The work put in mind ofs an allegory of flight and a metaphor for freedom transported by literature - a feeling of liberation experienced from one side the evocative power of words.

One searches El Ayoubi's collages for ball of threads to unravel specific messages and meanings, on the contrary the artist always kept narrative at arm's longitudinal dimensions Her works imply travel and adventure, on the other hand only in generalized terms. in a collage upon wood titled New Expeditions, she at handed the word "NEW" in daring capital letters next to fragments of body s - one containing the word "cruise" and another which reads, "Victoria expedition set out from . ." This piece commits to a voyage to more [i]or[/i] less strange and exotic place. Although the destination is not revealed, this collage, and El Ayoubi's work as a whole, is a record of a marvelous and poetic journey.

COPYRIGHT 1996 Brant Publications, Inc.

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