Basim Magdy, Cecilia Brunson Projects

Cecilia Brunson is hosting one of contemporary art’s rising stars. This year alone, the Egyptian-born artist Basim Magdy is participating in the New Museum Triennial 2015, and a number of international group and solo shows including the Basim Magdy Montreal retrospective. There was even a Basim Magdy Tate Modern conversation in 2013 with Regine Basha, Stuart Comer and Omar Kholeif. If that’s not enough, Cecilia Brunson Projects are presenting his first solo exhibition in London at their Bermondsey space.
It’s easy to see what so alluring about Magdy’s work – the candy coloured, fluorescent hues that dominate his films, paintings and photographs, coupled with humourous titles like Advice for the Young and Seekers of Sanity (2012), are hypnotic. But don’t be fooled by the cheerful optimism – there’s a perceptive enquiry lurking beneath.
Cecilia Brunson London exhibition
Magdy’s subject matter is giddily vast, examining war, information systems, scientific theories and the visual vocabulary of mass media. Works such as The Many Colours of the Sky Radiate Forgetfulness
(2014), a film on view for the first time in the UK, explores the idea of active forgetting and its consequences. In contrast Investigating the Colour Spectrum of a Post- Apocalyptic Future Landscape (2013), an 80 slide wall projection treated with household chemicals to depict the volcanic landscape of Lanzarote, is a powerful ode to the passage of time and degradation.