For South South, we are presenting a solo OVR that samples analog photographic work by Basim Magdy exploring narrative, time and history. The earliest work is a set of polaroids from 2014. Magdy takes them on impulse - collecting hundreds of them - and they allow him the formal space to experiment with his photography, from transferring 16mm film stills into instant photography to double exposure and utilizing different filters. We are also showing more recent composite photographs that are produced with his signature chemically altered film stock.
Magdy employs different forms of narrative with a deep urge to explore meaning in collective aspirations and the human trajectory of progress. His vocabulary is permeated with a perplexity at a future that seems to bring both tragedy and fortune and is an attempt to map out a sardonic account of our history. His work is specific for a visual language that denotes its temperament: an iridescent, unhurried flow of images that act as a futurist’s outlook on the contemporary. Magdy uses an array of classical and unconventional media, from oil, acrylic and spray paint to chemically altered film stock, photographs and film footage shot by the artist. The result is an aesthetic sensibility of the spaces he creates that is at once retro and futuristic, existing beyond the confines of time as we know it. The artist chemically alters his images with a lab technique he calls “film pickling”, where rolls of film are cured using acidic household solutions and exposed to light leaks, producing color and material effects that lay an absurdity over his subjects.
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AVAILABLE WORKS
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