I’ve always been a closet Goth punk, with a deep love for full sleeve tattoos (particularly on men, on certain women & I’d do it on my son if the world wasn’t so uptight), unnaturally coloured hair and general gore. My love for skulls however is chief among these, because they feed into my love of the study of anatomical drawing as well as my fascination with artists who are in turn fascinated by death (more on those later).

I also, however, love pretty things- such as floral arrangements and gardening. It can be mighty confusing being me, but more so being my husband when picking out a gift on my birthday.

Jacky Tsai, a contemporary Chinese artist extraordinaire, has made his mark on the art world by creating his iconic floral skulls for Alexander McQueen‘s fashion show and stores. He has various talents, ranging from painting, print, to graphic design and fashion, but my favourite of his works are his leather skull sculptures made of floral bouquets- a 1.6metre example of which is being made for the debut of his fashion line. He cleverly titles them “Floral Skullptures” (Nothing beats solid artistic ability and wit, I tell you. Nothing). Above is a sample of his work, see the rest of his portfolio here.

This is just brilliant. Pablo Garcia, an architect/artist who’s currently a professor at the Chicago Art Institute, has devised this incredible device he calls the “Profilograph” (2008). By documenting the profile outlines/image of any given object, Garcia uses these drawings to create a contiguous 3D cast that rotates on a circular spindle, giving movement to otherwise stagnant objects.

The video here features Garcia using Albrecht Dürer‘s Vier Bücher von Menschlicher Proportion (Four Books on Human Proportion) (1528), and allows the six facial profiles suggested by Dürer to stretch into endless possibilities of human profiles. The end result is exquisite, and is a perfect example of how historical scholarship and modern technology can merge to create an enlightening continuum between the past and present. Check Garcia’s website for more of his incredible work, and check here for the complete works of Albrecht Dürer (if you don’t know who he is by now, my heart goes out to you in sincere pity, m’love. Check his work out this instant and get acquainted).

This will be a bit of a follow up to my last post. I’m happy to say that Ganzeer, Mohammad Fahmy, read it and had a few things to say. The most important of these is that he felt I critiqued the exhibit as individual pieces, rather than as a contextual collection of work. It’s unfortunate that his retweet of my link to his review had to include his assumption that I did not “get” the essence of his show just because I didn’t like it, but I’m glad we got to chitchat about it anyway.

I’ll attempt to critique the entire exhibit as a whole then. As I stated in my last post, the entire body of work on the top floor of the Safar Khan gallery was, at best, mediocre. The intention was to take the piss of that type of production, in contrast to the more, progressive, forward, countercultural work downstairs. The latter appears to be gradually taking over the space, lending to the notion that graffiti and counter-cultural, anti-establishment imagery is making its way across the more mundane- hence “The Virus is spreading”. That was fairly clear to anyone familiar with Ganzeer’s abilities- he just doesn’t create that awful level of artwork unless it’s intentional, as I mentioned in my last post.

Now. My personal opinion is that there’s enough of that work out there, and that Ganzeer could’ve used this great amount of visibility to create actual good work rather than waste this opportunity on creating parodies of mediocre work. We have enough Duchamp-like efforts these days, what we need is more originality so that people can actually tell the difference. (Marcel Duchamp and his Dada movement, whose essence was to make fun of the artistic establishment at that time, did so in 1917. It was a significantly stronger art establishment, and his efforts were a lot more scarring than this example we have here. Also, we need new tactics, 95 years later).

The idea in itself was alright, but the work upstairs was too tweaked into becoming simply bad to reference establishment type work (which is too generalised an approach to work created by local university staff, students, government sanctioned artists and so on, because not all of it is awful. Most of it perhaps, but not all). More importantly, this particular concept stands if the work on the bottom floor is groundbreaking and awesome in contrast. It wasn’t. Some may argue that that was due to the censorship- but I personally found it to be greatly underachieving considering the amount of talent that was employed in its making.

Perhaps that was reason behind my reduction of the exhibit into its individual pieces: that the concept was clear but not sound enough to hold the exhibit up on its own. Mohammad Fahmy much appreciated this more holistic line of critique, and because it’s always nice and refreshing to have artists like their own critique- here it is.

Safar Khan is currently hosting the much-anticipated show by Ganzeer titled “The Virus is Spreading”. As usual Safar Khan had a great turn out at the opening, making Brazil Street in Zamalek look like a party just exploded on it. A few bottles of wine and the authorities would’ve shut down the entire island.

It needs to be said that I  have a reverse reaction to any exhibition that people are excited about: The more the buzz about a show, the more skeptical I am about it. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been living here long enough to know that most of us privileged enough to go to art galleries are immensely more excited about the latest cafe than we ever would be about the latest art exhibit. Or maybe I’m just cynical about those who excite easily. In any case, I was sadly proven correct about my hunch with this particular exhibit.

I’m a big fan of Ganzeer- both the art studio and man behind that pseudonym, Mohammad Fahmy. He’s a solid artist and graphic designer- very few can contest that, really. He’s gained a huge following during the 2011 revolution for his scathing anti-SCAF graffiti and soon became a household name for anyone who knew anything about graffiti during that time (which is pretty much every young Egyptian and their mother).

I expected much, much more. It’s because I have been following a lot of Ganzeer’s work that I did- not because my expectations are warped. In fact, what was most disappointing is that MoFa (Fahmy’s other pseudonym. He’s cool like that) has been tweeting and posting these tidbits of images in anticipation of the show. They were brilliant. Sadly, they had a lot more quality of line and interest than most of the images seen in the show itself.

The bottom floor of Safar Khan was interesting. Smock full of imagery, graffiti and writing on the wall, it was a lot to take in. Ganzeer’s recognisable super hero character, a very well-drawn cat, political  posters and an excellent full-length portrait of a garbage man holding a spray can leads the way to the main piece in the gallery. That piece happens to be the most intriguing creation by the artist but it was unfortunately censored last minute by the gallery’s owner, Sherwet Shafei, and frankly I can’t say I can blame her. A veiled woman stands naked waist done, vagina bare, with an umbilical cord attached from her to a baby above her head to the right, tangled in the process in a devil-like character, is the image that takes the entire back wall of the gallery. That wall is incidentally the one facing the glass right on the street- making for somewhat problematic situation for anyone associated with the gallery.

Honestly, I’d have thought that MoFa would’ve thought of that potential problem in advance, perhaps taking that piece to the top floor where it would be better concealed but still available for us to see in its entirety. I would have preferred that over anything on that top floor anyway (except for one single painting, which was fun to look at but nothing we haven’t seen before): a shame in and of itself. Nothing on that top floor was original, interesting, technically intriguing or even aesthetically pleasing in the least. It was such a dire shame to have wasted so much space on- Holy moly- a line traced image of the pyramids vista (yes, the pyramids) PRINTED on canvas. Or- another holy moly- painfully bad pseudo calligraphic paintings of the name  “Mohammad”. I understand the irony, the kitsch, the commentary being made; but no. Not from this crew, not from Ganzeer.

I guess, knowing who these people are and how they think, I expected a lot more punch in their work. I wanted to leave the gallery reeling from their witty observation, their intricacy of line and their crazy imagery. Particularly when the curator/gallery owner happens to be Mona Shafei, possibly one of the most tolerant, contemporary and supportive of young talent in the city, there was no excuse for, at least, the top floor.

Regardless, it’s worth passing by the gallery to see the bottom floor- surely don’t bother with the stairs. I think that a lot of the drawings deserve a closer look, because although not at its fullest potential, Ganzeer’s super talent can be seen in them.