PAST EXHIBITIONS:

Basim Magdy

September 9, 6 – 8 pm

Newman Popiashvili Gallery is pleased to present the first solo exhibition of Basim Magdy, In the Grave of Intergalactic Utopia. During the last few years Basim Magdy’s work has included painting, drawing, animation, billboards, murals, videos and installations. Magdy’s imagery of war and absurd situations involving 'heroes’ become parallel worlds where things look familiar but also awkward as their usual roles are confused. In the Grave of Intergalactic Utopia, the ‘hero’ of this installation is an astronaut. This exhibition highlights the artist’s interest in the dissemination of information and how it can be systematically subverted. The collective understanding and expectations of outer space as a largely unfathomable but promising physical existence is the core of this exhibition. Since the first moon landing, space colonies have been suggested as the ultimate human artificial utopia. Magdy’s work for this exhibition proposes an absurd and dark vision of the fate of this constructed utopia. A once-glorious astronaut sits still on the floor of an animal cage, where he is imprisoned. Surrounded by unfamiliar and mundane daily objects like banana peels, peanuts, tree leaves, an insect zapper and a water-bowl in his imposed habitat, his humiliation is evident and even more humbling is the evidence and traces of his glorious past. In the room where the cage is situated, his captor is absent but scattered clues of this beastly residence hint at the astronaut’s possible superiority.

Magdy sees the astronaut as a mediator between what we are and our ignorance of what surrounds us, he is our ambassador to the unknown and our tool to claiming new territory. The astronaut becomes a hero for humanity and the sole possible provider of an escape from the widely expected dim future of human existence. By reversing the paradigm of our high expectations, confusion evolves and the line between reality and its representation is blurred, provoking a response among the viewers, be it laughter, fear, shock, contemplation or doubt. While the astronaut sits still in his animal cage, the audience will be allowed inside his captor’s room through a shattered hole in its walls to get as close as possible to his new reality.

Basim Magdy lives in Cairo, Egypt. He has exhibited at Neue Kunsthalle St.Gallen, Caixa Forum (Barcelona), Zendai Museum of Modern Art (Shanghai), Momenta Art (New York), Townhouse Gallery (Cairo), Art in General (New York), Triangle Project Space (San Antonio) and participated in several group shows at the gallery. In 2006 his work will appear in exhibitions at Sala Rekalde (Bilbao) and Apartment Project (Istanbul).