South likes: 13 Essential Rules for Understanding the World at On Stellar Rays, New York

South likes: 13 Essential Rules for Understanding the World at On Stellar Rays, New York
13 Essential Rules for Understanding the World
On Stellar Rays, New York, U.S.A. in collaboration with Sun\Ra
18 May – 21 June, 2014

Text by Michelangelo Corsaro

Titled after a video by Basim Magdy, showcased among other pieces, the exhibition on display at On Stallar Rays carries out a reflection on abstraction and absurdity through the work of four artists. Zipora Fried’s paintings remain in balance between surrealist influences and a notion of sublime borrowed from German Romanticism. The union of these figurative references produces a visual pun that plays between the sublimity of absurd and the absurdity of sublime. Nabil Nahas works with paintings that mimics natural formalism, referring to camouflage and to the non-hierarchical composition of traditional Islamic art. Dani Tull resorts to the symbolic power of the spider web—a token of the interconnected nature of the cosmos and a mystical time-space paradigm. His sculptures mention the continuous flow of birth, life, and death, teasing abstraction with a psychedelic approach. Last but not least, Basim Magdy’s video list a series of thirteen rules for understanding the world. Imbued with dark humour and paired with suggestive Super 8 images, these “tips” include statements such as “Never assume or pretend to understand anything” or “With every purchase or exchange you drown faster in absurdity whirlpools”. A third advice from Magdy’s video is worth mentioning, as it sums up the spirit of the show: “Never use logic. Abstract behaviour is the way of this world.”

http://onstellarrays.com/exhibitions/exhibitions/13-essential-rules-for-understanding-the-world/