Amir Bey

' Whirlers '

May 19 - June 6

Gallery X will present the exhibition WHIRLERS, featuring copper foil assemblage and photography by Amir Bey. The work is inspired by the Al-Tanoura Show, an exposition of Egyptian dancers and musicians held at the Al Ghouri Palace, a mosque in Cairo, that Mr. Bey experienced in June 2001.

Derived from the Whirling Dervishes, this style was without the chanting and prayers generally used in the Turkish form. However, the dancers' spiritual vitality was evident as they wheeled in circular movements with ecstatic expressions and trance-like eyes, their skirts forming gravity-defying shapes caused by continually spinning. There were thirteen musicians who skillfully played an array of horn, string, and percussive instruments: the dumbek, nai, buzuk, daf, rababa.

Mr. Bey's sepia-toned photographs taken by natural light create sculptural forms out of the dancers' motions and his multi-textured assemblages of copper foil respond to the photographic images. The patinas made from acids, direct fire, oils, and natural oxidation give the metal's surface the feel of paper, plaster and leather in places. Mr. Bey has used various shapes of copper in a collage-like manner. In this way he has evoked the tiles and mosaics on the mosque's walls, parallel strips to represent the wooden boards of the floors, patterns and shapes found on the costumes worn by the dancers, and face prints which have been etched into the copper. A variety of brass, copper and aluminum nails emphasize and punctuate movement, and add texture as they tie these elements together.