1 - 7 November 2001
Issue No.558
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 1 - 7 November 2001 Issue No.558 |
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A little Che
"The numerous hazards of riding your bike without mom's permission": am I the only one who finds that that cutesy mom sticks in the throat like a barb. I don't suppose for a moment that it is intended to, but hook it does, and nastily. Not that it is a bad thing, for the impact of Basim Magdy's work is largely dependent on such sharp little details. Look carefully: one of the numerous hazards of riding your bike without mom's permission are those sinister looking knives, stencilled onto the bottom of the canvas.
This is a virulently coloured show: acrylic, spray paint, oil pastel and glitter, all in unmediated, acid shades, all in faux naive, graffiti outline. Other elements come occasionally into play, a polaroid snapshot here, a bit of collage work there, but the gist of the thing, its singular register, is a replication of the immediacy of graffiti, which is, if you pause to think for a moment, something of an uphill struggle.
"The Revolution" coopts the agitprop dimensions of the form. But a little Che, if he goes a long way, can sometimes go too far. Here he is in full, iridescent pop-icon incarnation, complete with beret and a shocking pink, jagged halo. There are guns, too, and tanks, and pairs of hands applauding. A bird flutters, in outline, with Lumumba emblazoned on its breast, hovering above a nest filled with three eggs, though they might as well be hand-grenades, such are the subversions to which any reading of these images is subject. And the mechanics of the subversion have everything to do with the loads carried by the unexploded contradictions contained within the seemingly innocuous term faux naive.
Magdy cannot afford the polemical, though he sometimes appears to take refuge there. In one image a skull extrudes a thought bubble from a hole at the top of the cranium: it reads "extinction source". Meanwhile a figure sits in front of a television set, eating a banana. The TV screen flashes missiles, the sanitised, television version of war, fit for all our sitting rooms. Feed us mud brick is graffitoed on the picture surface. Points made, certainly, but points that don't quite lend themselves to anything in particular. The artist's own agitprop, rather than his commentary on the same, is a bit too crude within the context of this show. But such are the ironies of an ironic post-modernity. One can never quite move beyond the chicken/egg riddle.
"Tower of Babel" could easily have been as problematic, but the addition of what appears to be a radio transmitter atop the shocking pink ziggurat detracts from the (still) obvious comparisons.
Jenny Leimert
In another, more worrisome image, it is the sense of an artist ironising that offers the viewer refuge. "Girl Psychology" is another title that sticks in the throat, and this dream of butterflies, washing machines, electric irons, cooking pots and stencilled keys fails to loosen the hook. Magdy, of course, may well be playing this one for laughs. I'm not so sure, which could well make of the whole show a telling commentary on the interpretative process. But then again...
Future, Basim Magdy's portentously titled show , is in the Townhouse galleries new annexe, a refreshingly neutral space. And the titular image, just in case we should doubt that the really big narratives remain intact, is a stand off between an angel, with wings, and a devil, with horns and tail.
Elsewhere, in the main gallery, on the second floor, Jenny Leimert gets the sticky end of the lollipop in terms of display space, which is a great pity.
In Egyptian Gestures Leimert reworks a great deal of archaeological material, from ancient animal petroglyphs -- a pre-historic graffiti -- to rubbings of bas reliefs. At times she painstakingly recreates the fractured surfaces of ancient frescos, at others utilises imagery taken from such wall paintings, reproducing animals, birds, and stylised vegetable designs on fabric carefully aged, knocked back and then hung on wooden poles.
But this meticulous working of the material, aging, washing and knocking back of colour is badly served by the display space. The idea, perhaps, was that the worn out plaster, the rubbed down decrepitude of the gallery, would somehow find a resonance in the work. If this was the case, it has badly misfired, with the result that Leimert's attention to detail, her slight tonal modulations, and the meticulous recreation of temporal attrition is submerged in an almost Stygian gloom.
Tellingly, it is the least muted, and least typical, pieces that come off best in this display, particularly the large, basket weave panel incorporating blatant patches of gold. Otherwise, try to filter out the impact of the space -- admittedly a difficult task -- and what emerges is a show that celebrates the resilience of the most seemingly fragile of objects and images.
From so much "dead" material Leimert contrives nothing short of the festive, and without even a hint of the wake. Ducks, lotus flowers, hoopoes, egrets; fat grapes on stylised vines; abstract, geometric patterning, charioteers: Graeco Roman frescos, the art of the Amarna period, secco-graffito, scratched into rock -- the sources, if uniformly ancient, are diverse, and all are transformed into an observance of the constancy of human gestures.
There is one intrusion, the appearance of a tank, no more than a cypher, reduced to its essentials. It, though, has rather less impact than the space on the effectiveness of this show. Egyptian Gestures is more than a little beguiling.
Basim Magdy and Jenny Leimert are showing at the Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art until 20 November. For full details see Listings
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