UMPRUM Visiting Artist Studio and Fine Art Department invite you to a public talk by artist and filmmaker Basim Magdy.
December 5, 2024 at 2 p.m.
Auditorium of TCM UMPRUM
Mikulandská 134/5, Prague 1
Free Entry, in English
Playing Musical Chairs in a Locked Room: Public Artist Talk by Basim Magdy
Open Course
12. 11. 2024
In this talk, Basim Magdy will discuss a selection of his works with film, photography sculpture, text, painting and how he sees a relationship between them in a non-structured yet logical way. Investigating the repetitive cycles of time and using historical references and fragments of seemingly unrelated events to create fiction is critical to the way Magdy works. He weaves together a web of seemingly disconnected elements to find meaning in their new connections. Essential to Magdy’s work is desire to explore new technical aspects within each medium he works with and blurring the line between photography and filmmaking on one hand and painting on the other. Magdy will discuss his work with film as a material in a painterly way and the process he’s been developing for a decade which he calls “film pickling”. Using absurdity, humor, vibrant colors and images of places that feel familiar but are unrecognizable, the world Magdy creates opens a door to a new way of understanding what we usually know.
Basim Magdy is an artist and filmmaker. He works with painting, photography, film, text, sculpture and installation in their expanded forms. He creates poetic narratives about the layers of absurdity in daily occurrences. In Magdy’s work, future, present and past seem to play musical chairs while locked up in a room. Humor is sometimes one of the ways out.
His work appeared recently in solo exhibitions at Frac Bretagne, Rennes; KM21 Museum for Contemporary Art, The Hague; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg; M HKA, Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp; CAPC Museum of Contemporary Art, Bordeaux; MCA Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; MAXXI National Museum of the 21st Century Arts, Rome; Jeu de Paume, Paris and in group shows at The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Castello di Rivoli, Torino, New Museum Triennial, New York; Henie Onstad Museum, Oslo; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Taipei Biennial; MEDIACITY Seoul Biennial; 13th Istanbul Biennial; Sharjah Biennial 11 and La Triennale, Palais de Tokyo among others.
He was shortlisted for the Future Generation Art Prize, Kiev (2012) and won the Abraaj Art Prize, Dubai and the New:Vision Award, CPH:DOX Film Festival, Copenhagen (2014) and the Experimental Award at the Curtas Vila do Conde – International Film Festival, Portugal (2015). He was selected Deutsche Bank Artist of the Year (2016). His films were screened at Tate Modern, Locarno Film Festival, New York Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, ICA London among many others.