Mystic Forms

Mystic Forms' work belongs to an ongoing body, which Wissam Shawkat originally launched at his solo exhibition ‘Monumental 11/11’ at Tashkeel in 2015. It is based on appreciating the graphic qualities of letter forms in the world of calligraphy. Wissam investigates the relationship between visual and textual practice in modernist compositions, referencing calligraphic abstract forms. Some of these works draw on a creative tension between geometric abstraction, derived from Bauhaus, Letterist, Futurist and Cubist movements, and combined with the sinuous characteristics of Arabic calligraphy scripts. Calligraphers who train in classical scripts spend years upon years working towards the mastery of the letters’ forms. They also master the space around them – the positive and negative space, the black and white, the inside and outside of the letters. (Commissioned by Tashkeel)