Not much cheer in youth when even the alienation strikes false, writes Nigel Ryan The Annual Youth Salon -- it is an event of sorts, though it can be dispiriting and more than a little desultory. Perhaps it is the earnestness of it all, the absolute lack of any humour, of anything that might even hint at joy, that makes it so. Not that there is any reason to be sentimental about youth -- all too often it tends to be one long rainy day. That there is barely a single joke being cracked throughout the precincts of the Palace of Art, though, is cause for worry. A tedious earnestness comes with the territory, but must it all be so unmitigatingly grey? More than 260 works are being displayed in the gallery, in a remarkable mish mash. Corners are annexed and corridors partitioned to create space for installations, more often than not using a great deal of see-through plastic. The hanging of clear plastic shower curtains, with or without the addition of bits and pieces of broken chandelier, does not an exciting installation make, so quite why there are so many among the young prepared to follow this particular path is anyone's guess. Just what do they tell them at art school? As with shower curtains, so with mirrors. Mirrored alcoves, mirrors framed in copper: in the former, the mirrors set at a right angle, tilted, several clear-plastic baskets hang. They may well be made from shower curtains. The baskets contain variously coloured fluids with bits of gunge floating about in them. It's not the most inspiring of constructions, and like a great deal of art that claims to be conceptual it would be kinder simply to post the idea on the Internet. That at least would save any one the trouble of actually going to look at the stuff. Perhaps some commentary is being made on consumerism, on the packaging of primary drives. Or maybe it is simply nostalgia of mud. Whatever, this particular piece is by one E Mohamed, or so it is labelled. All the names contained here are taken directly from the labelling in the Palace of Arts, which statement is intended as an apology for the preponderence of initials contained within this review. Really, it's not my fault. Heidi Wahba's mirrors are the ones framed in copper. No shower curtains here -- instead bits and pieces of broken chandelier are stuck onto the glass surfaces. The Heidi I picked up from the signature appended to the piece, which is otherwise labelled as painting, by H Samer. Maybe the Heidi is part of the piece, an obscure reference that once unravelled would give some meaningful twist. And maybe not. In truth presentation -- as is always the case at this annual event -- does nobody any favours. It's a question of stack them high and pile them in -- the public sector department store method of display, itself possibly a rip-off from the Egyptian Museum -- with the result that it is almost impossible to see anything clearly. Which is hardly fair on the viewers, let alone participants. There is an illusion of space in the first gallery: here, at least, some attention appears to have been given to the placement of works. Having made space here -- presumably whoever was in charge of hanging was operating on the principle that first impressions are important -- the rest has to be crammed in the various back corridors and strangely connecting half rooms into which the exhibition space has been carved. But breathe in the opening space while you have a chance. Here are the two pieces incorporating mirrors. There is, too, a four poster bed, one of those iron beds, painted matt black with gold bits. And the bed is covered, the cloth part appliquéed, part painted. Bride and groom, he in black suit, she in rouched dress carrying a bouquet. Backs against the bed, faces to heaven. This could constitute a joke, though it's not particularly funny. It is by M Talat. There appear to be several video pieces though the videos seem not be working. There is too a corner labelled performance, but no performer was in attendance. So much for a quiet Wednesday morning: sometime before the exhibition closes at the end of the month it may be possible to view these things in action, though nobody seemed quite sure when. From this showing, with one or two exceptions, painting can be added to that growing list of activities -- most annoyingly, to my mind, is cinema -- that invariably have the word crisis attached. There is a great deal of surrealist tish- tosh, and almost as much expressionist spish- splosh. Of real substance, though, there is alarmingly little. A great many stooped figures place their heads in their hands in presumably youthful angst. M Abdel-Fatah prefers semi- naked figures standing in small crowds, pseudo- erotic poses with a great deal of pouting into the middle distance that doesn't quite convince, and all in saturated, half-heartedly psychedelic schemes. Here, one suspects, is one of those instances where the art could benefit if the artist had readier access to mind-altering chemicals. They might at least lend conviction to what appears at the moment to be a thoroughly ersatz alienation. I rather liked two large canvases by Y Haraz -- the same two figures, in ambiguous setting -- young men doing nothing in particular, just being together, I suppose, though the rose and burgundy palette is a trifle louche. But the mood here manages to strike true, and the manipulation of paint is more than competent. Y Nabel's large canvas, a series of kit bags standing in a row, a soldier, dissected by the edge of the canvas so that the spectator sees only the lower half of the body, is similarly impressive. The neatly pre-packaged militarism seems coolly ironic, though I may well be bringing my own prejudices to the painting. It's a long time since I have seen soldiers in such well pressed uniforms. Back to mirrors, though this time on the floor. In one of the larger spaces A Abdel-Keir inverts the sitting room, sticking sofa, chairs, table with coca cola bottle and cigarettes (Marlboro, it may be important) and other accessories to a comfortable domesticity -- television, book shelves, curtains -- upside down on the ceiling. Look into the mirrors and it is all neatly resolved: in a subterranean space that is really nowhere the room again makes sense. The one anomaly in this carefully constructed piece is the painting, on the far wall, that (I think inadvertently) the artist does not invert. Here, perhaps, is a joke at the expense of art, however accidental. Oh, upside down lives: the visual punning is literal, and a bit fun-fair, but that comes as a relief when there is so much earnestness in the air. Elsewhere, as in previous Youth Salons, it is the photographers, and the graphic artists, that come off best, perhaps because here the acquiring of a degree of technical competence is a necessary first step. W El-Masry's two photographs of figures milling about a large open space, viewed from above and pointing cameras at some tourist attraction, a monument we do not see, manages an eloquent subversion of platitudes of the "travel broadens the mind" kind. Here mass tourism has rendered the culturally specific invisible even when it is the supposed reason for hopping on an airplane in the first place. There are any number of potentially interesting illustrators showing work among the graphic contingent: publishers, one hopes, though probably in vain, should take note, particularly of work by A Dargham and M Hassan, though amid all this clamour such exercises in the quietly meticulous get terribly lost. I liked, too, a drawing by T El-Chekh, big footed angels flying around a transmission tower, above a landscape populated by sketchy biro palms. As usual, though, it remains almost impossible to see the wood for the trees: few are the spectators who will wade through all this, which begs many questions about exactly what this kind of show hopes to achieve. It has become one of many calendar fixtures that need a massive overhaul if it is not to sink into utter redundancy. You leave the precincts of this particular palace with feelings that are anything but palatial. Its 2003, and there is no space at all within which to be young, and certainly not when its labelled as such. 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