© Images Roman März

BASIM MAGDY
RENEGADE DREAMS HANGING FROM THE CLOUDS

KÖNIG BERLIN
30 OCTOBER – 18 DECEMBER 2020

In Basim Magdy’s film NEW ACID, the animals communicate with each other via text message, just like people. The lemurs plan their exit from the animal kingdom; a pensive sea lion contemplates the immateriality of Bitcoins, and close by, a hippopotamus monologises about weight complexes. At first sight, New Acid seems to be about humour and banality, but clearly the film soon enters the realms of more pressing issues: nationalism, racism, social hierarchies. Basim Magdy sets out to visualise our usual communication structures and show that all forms of society, no matter how open they may seem, are guided by similar structures and power relations.

While NEW ACID centers on the world of pure words, with chats as the new reality, Magdy’s paintings also focus on surreal stories and alternative realities, dealing with the extinction of the world, animal species that never existed, and past predictions of the apocalypse. What became of the prophecies that never actually happened? What if you – and the three lemurs – arrive at the gateway to the other world and find it doesn’t open? Driven by the urge to escape, Basim Magdy views the world as an archive with many openings but also a number of dead ends. Rather than focusing merely on what has been, he also explores what might have been and what never was.

 

FEATURED ARTIST

BASIM MAGDY
Basim Magdy (b. 1977 in Assiut, Egypt) lives and works in Basel, Switzerland, as an artist and filmmaker. His films, paintings and photographic works are layered with poetic gestures and unusual observations that allude to absurdity as a daily occurrence. His work colorfully mixes fiction with historical references and collective delusion embedded with humor– all of which seem to be trapped inside a confused sense of time where the past, present and future constantly switch places.  

His work appeared recently in solo exhibitions at museums such as Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg Sweden (2022); MuHKA, Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwe...
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