Souheil Abdesselam – Amira Castle

Click here to view Souheil’s Gallery.

Architecture is building into a big story in art at the moment, with painters, sculptors and installationists alike using a vernacular based in structural motifs. For me one of the most interesting developments in architecturally-based art is matte painting, because it needs to look real enough to fool the eye (and the camera) into believing in it. At the same time it’s most commonly used to show things that don’t or can’t exist – past glories, sci-fi scenes, imagined futures and so on. What I like about Souheil’s image is that it taps into the idea of expressing amazing, grand scale architecture. The use of his favoured “god light” to pick out features adds to the effect of a utopian, cathedral-like structure. The sunkissed greens and silvery blues of the colour harmony contrast with the fiery pink focal point at the top of the tower to fill the scene with glimmering light. The use of classical and arabesque styles in the architecture gives a subtle impression of a harmonious, scholarly civilisation dwelling within these epically-scaled walls.