Art By Sattar ستار الفرطوسي

2008-01-12T12:30:00.000-08:00

2007-12-10T15:05:00.000-08:00

2007-12-09T06:50:00.000-08:00

My view
My name is Sattar Fartousi. I was born in Iraq. I have studied art in Bagdad Fine Arts Institute; Visual Arts for five years. I worked in the field of art for more than 10 years in Iraq untill I left.
I moved to Jordan. There I was working with my "second profession" as a music teacher. But I still kept on painting, because it fulfills my needs of survival.
Since I came to Finland, I have been working as a freelancer. I have participated in many international exhibitions and biennales. And because of those, many people here in Finland and Europe own collections of my paintings.
Art has been and always will be the dream project of my life! Or should I say, it is an alternative way of thinking, it is a solution to a puzzle. In my mind, art is beauty and a psychological balance to both society and individuals.
My message in my art is to combine the consciousness and the subconscious. The combination is very important. I think that all visions, pictures, sounds, we store them in our minds. Then we combine them to create an image out of our experience. I mean all of our experiences in visions, sounds or other wise physical.
I mean that the image we create in our minds has a lot to do with subconscious. We store different kinds of images to our brain during our life, but how to present them? Aesthetic is important, because in art you have to surprise people and your only tool of surprising others is beauty.
Other thing of importance in my art is the figure. I don't mean the figure of itself, but the glory of the figure. A man needs to see and analyze things. Since I deal with visual art, I have to make my message to some extant clear. My creating imaginary figure and making out of it in an abstract way, the subject that I want it to be.
As an artist I experience life in a different way. So my life in Iraq was different than it was in Jordan and then again what it is in Finland. In life I always follow my instinct and my sensibility. I believe that sensibility receive faster than knowledge.
My experience in Finland as an artist is a rich experience. It is melted with calm and peace. I already know what I want to do. Some other places of the world that I have lived in, was not as good as here in Finland.
But the subjective equivalent is always the exile. My life in exile is something that I cannot express by words and even not in paintings. It comes as if I do not want it to come, it is always like this. Maybe because as I said, I depend on sensibility more than I depend on knowledge and other methods.

2007-12-09T06:46:00.000-08:00

Contact Me
Sattar Fartousi
Tel: 040 739 9819
sttrswsw@yahoo.com

2007-12-09T06:39:00.000-08:00

Personal Exhibitions
- 1985 Artists Union Iraq
- 1986 Iraqi Artists Associetion
- 1995 Hammuraby Amman Jordan
- 2002 Eu Man Gallery Helsinki Finland
Group Exhibition
- 1994 Baladna Gallery Amman
- 1996 National Gallery Amman
- 2000 Participation Helsinki Finland
- 2000 Taide Halli Vaasa Finland
- 2000 M.art Gallery Vienna Austria
- 2001 The Outside Of the Inside M.art Vienna Austria
- 2001 Bianale Salon Cracow Poland
- 2002 Autum Salon Cracow Poland
- 2003 Porvoo Art Hall
- 2003 Bienalle Dialogue St.Petersburg Russia
- 2005 Eu.Man Malmö Sweden
- 2005 Caisa Finland With Amir kahtib
- 2007 Helsinki kaapeli tehdas The Third Culture Eu.Man
- 2007 Helsinki Stoa Roots

2007-12-09T06:34:00.000-08:00

Critic
Sattar Fartousi bara målar. Han är ingeln seriös person annars säger han, men sitt måleri gör han allvar.
Än så länge handlar det om splittring, främlingskap, separtation. Det där 'än så länge' avslöjar en ovanlig optimism, ger en känslan av att Fartousi velat och vågat den långa vägen - att på djupet processa den oundvikliga dubbelheten i tillvaron här. I det han gör lever det soliga och traumatiska Irak kvar.
Men samtidigt lever de kalla, mörka vintrarna ut i målningarna, lite som höll de på att sluka i sig minnet av värmen och ljuset. Hans intresse för färg och form är inte att ta miste på, set känss som om han kämpade med en utmaning som aldrig får ge med sig. Skenet bedrar i tidigare målningar med draget av action painting; i själva verket målar Fartousi 'spontant' bara på skoj.
Den nyaste målningarna pekar mot en inressant rymbildning. Och vart det bär vet ingen.

Bianca Gräsbeck
2.2.2002 Huvudstadsbladet

2007-12-09T06:30:00.000-08:00

When cultures come together
In some form, art and creation has to be formal. But nowadays, with the aid of photagraphy, painters have broken through from the form expressing as it used to be. Sattar is a good example with his metaformal way of showing us the whole by letting colors meet each other and let the beholders eye form – well, whatever the onlookers eye form of the sight.
I wouldn't want to underline any forms to his pieces, as I know that all the eyes which get to capture the sight of the paint of Sattar, see the paintings from their own perspective. For me, the paintings tell stories from underwater worlds to classical paint compositions and beyond, to summer afternoons light from a window and to some glances of the globe itself.
When the light and the warmth of the Middle East met the icy and dark boreal climate of the Northern hemosphere, it gave birth to these paintings, which Sattar has made during the seven years he has stayed here in Finland. Why couldn't it happen, every time when cultures collide, in this peaceful harmony of different colours coming to meet each other on the canvas and to give each other different tones to shine in - all of them having their own space and time in unity.
But not all of Sattars works tell me about peace, when remembering his far away birthland, Iraq, and the great injust it has faced by some of the western worlds politicians. Sometimes I see fire catching the paint and different colors bouncing from each other in the vicinity of the beholder of the sight – like the world itself.
But the harmony comes again when I see the wholeness of all the works together – when fire meets ice, the ice melts and the elements give a healing hug to each other bringing one and other out of dualism of the poles. While none of the phenomena of the world are black and white, the paintings of Sattar are definitely rich in all colours without falling into the depths of the ancient way of giving the illusions an exact form. The paintings give different worlds to everybody, this one was my illustration inspired by the paint on canvas. Now, lets let the paintings speak for themselves.
Timo Puohiniemi
24.2.2006