A new show by a promising young artist reveals the danger in watching TV. Sayed Mahmoud takes a look Gallery Mashrabiya in Downtown Cairo is currently holding a show by a young artist that challenges the dominance of TV culture and its unbridled influence on our lives. The show, Prince Television, is Ahmed Sabri's fifth solo exhibition. As a painter, Sabri is known for his passion for detail, but in this exhibition he takes his art a step further, and ventures into the world of social criticism. The paintings suggest at least some affinity with the ideas of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002), whose famous book On Television and Journalism was translated into Arabic by Darwish El-Halwagui in 2007. Bourdieu was a major critic of television and the role it plays in the manufacturing of symbolic violence. According to Bourdieu, the television image is selected for its sensationalist impact and its ability to attract the largest number of viewers. Television, the French sociologist contends, dramatises everything, as it has an inherent propensity to emphasise the extraordinary. Sabri shares this critical perception of the media. "The idea of the exhibition is related to my upbringing. From childhood I was raised in a way that made me take an interest in matters of belief and inculcation," he says. "I am convinced that anything we learn, whether at home or through the media, since the latter are also the makers of belief, deserves some analysis. All beliefs, and I mean everything including the religious, call for scrutiny. As a maker of belief, the media impact can be just as potent as religion." The 40 paintings on show all demonstrate how awkward the images offered on television can become incomprehensible unless associated with a text guiding the viewer in a certain direction. Sabri's work gives insight into how television dominates various cultural, scientific, and artistic endeavours. Because television channels need to compete for viewers, producers do all they can to stay ahead of the game. To do so they use everything in their disposal, including religious beliefs and acts of symbolic violence. Television is the "deity of our age", Sabri says. His words often echo that of Bourdieu, who once stated that every one of the television producers, presenters, and guests was a mere puppet in the hands of market-driven deities. Interestingly enough, the weekly magazine Al-Mugaz (The Brief), itself a market-oriented publication, slammed the exhibition, claiming that Sabri's images encouraged immorality, attracted attention to pornographic programmes, and disparaged religious figures. Sabri remains unruffled: "It is my opinion that those who work in the media use the same dynamics religion and the clergy employ to control the human mind. Sometimes, television dynamics go a step further than religion in using images, exaggeration, tales, parables, desires, fears and current events to make a point. All of these methods have taken a more evolved form at the hand of the media." Sabri chronicles the change that television has undergone since the 1950s, in the days when it aspired to be an educational tool and programmes remained faithful to this goal. By the 1990s the educational idea -- patronising as it was -- was ditched in favour of a relentless quest for competition and the use of quickly- produced images to cater to an impatient audience. The suggestion that television dabbles in ideological propaganda and caters to exhibitionist impulses is one that comes through Sabri's work in the form of exaggerated, cartoon- like compositions. "The media world is full of unjustified contradictions," he says. "When you freeze television frames, what you may end up with is absurd frames. The subtitles in a film, or the scrolling lines during the news, may make sense in a video, but when you take them frame by frame you may identify illogical combinations. This is what gave me the chance to select some interesting combinations." Sabri's documentation of reality takes no abstract form. "The documentary approach doesn't deprive a picture of its value. In a certain moment of reception, a picture can turn into a document and a testimony of certain developments." There is a historic side to his vision of reality. "The matter of documentation is important for my project. There is an old relation between painters and political and religious beliefs. The classical painter was always subject to the opinion of the cleric or the ruler. The aim of his work was to document and support the existing beliefs in any given period. You see this clearly in churches, mosques, temples, and all places of worship as well as old royal palaces." Is Sabri doing the same? Although a fierce critic of cultural manipulation, Sabri hopes that his art will have the longevity of the classics. "I don't think that my work is beholden to temporary appreciation. I believe that its value will increase with time, especially after the images I use have long disappeared. The documentary material is immortal by its very nature." The paintings in the exhibition point to what television's quest for commercial success could lead do. Images, Sabri suggests, are chosen on the basis of primordial instincts. The melange of sex and violence that we see on television today is an inherent to the mechanics of the industry. Television, you may agree, has immense impact on teenagers, the way they think, and the way they appreciate art and understand reality. When you watch television, the boundaries between reality and fiction blend. The vicarious satisfaction viewers get from television is what makes this media a main catalyst to modern consumerism. Instead of being a conveyor of reality, television has turned into the opposite. And any sense of reality the viewers may acquire is one that has been manipulated every step of the way, according to Sabri.
