Basim Magdy’s show at Art Sümer looks at the future

ISTANBUL

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.