Istanbul’s Art Sümer hosts Egyptian artist Basim Magdy’s third solo show titled “An Escalator Descending Towards Mysterious Time Machines.”
The show is an invitation to look at the future through a crystal ball, observe the present from the bottom of the ocean, and consider a different retelling of history.
Magdy is showing two films on rotation as well as a selection from his new photographic series someone tried to lock up time. Referencing historical events, the combination of images and text is the artist’s attempt to carve out a place to retell history in a fictional way.
By creating new stories, Magdy proposes an open-ended reading of existing material and hints at the cyclical nature of events that are seemingly new for each generation.
Presented on a color-graded wall, the installation hints at submersion, a thematic connecting tissue that runs throughout the exhibition. Using different kinds of film stock, and a method for developing film that he calls “pickling” – in which different kinds of acidic household chemicals produce new color combinations as calculated accidents – the artist produces a recycled reality that is familiar yet different.
The same process was used for his film “No Shooting Stars,” in which the protagonist is the ocean, but the narrator a slippery combination of differing viewpoints.
A source of fear as well as wonder, the ocean is home to creatures known and unknown. In the film, the ocean is conjured by an ever-shifting narrator, deepening this reservoir for mythmaking.
The show continues until March 23.
