That passion within contemporary Egyptian politics, coupled with Kassim's compositional approach, produces a Pac-Man Psycho, narrates Gamal Nkrumah The carrion-consuming crow closely associated with death and the Devil, or devilish divinations plucked out eyes from corpses -- a symbol of the Devil blinding sinners. In Ahmed Kassim's painting "Invasion" -- oil on canvas 220x180 cm -- the crow is blindfolded, sometimes sporting the policeman's navy blue uniform or the soldier's yellow helmet. And the crow is juxtaposed on a map of Cairo -- the Nile is strewn with bridges leading to nowhere in Earth Google's Hypercities. Death duly comes, but the birds are eerily becoming in black and blue. Kassim's crows have dead-end careers. Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 bombshell, "The Birds", is skillfully evoked in Kassim's excruciatingly iconic "Invasion". Kassim's crows, like Hitchcock's ferocious infestation of birds, appears to be inspired by the Hadean Daphne Du Maurier horror short story. The diabolical blindfolded birds are simultaneously robotic ciphers and a distinctly human adversary, the hated state security apparatus. Kassim is an accomplished but quiet spoken artist. His eerily familiar figures are peremptory, often authoritarian in lurid repose, but rest assured, they would brook no contradiction or contradistinction. Kassim paints objects that cannot easily be spoken. Yet they summon delinquents and culpable characters for cruel retribution. Kassim's paintings constitute a veritable collection of the horrors of authoritarianism and totalitarianism that have gripped Egypt for longer than we care to remember. Grotesque scenes of the popular intransigent rejection of autocracy abound. Kassim's gloomy visions and victims pathetically anticipating action transpire into lurid public orgies. His works are open to endless interpretation. His tang can be tasted with a political palate. The apparition of the Empyrean composition, Kassim's "Snake and Ladder" is an urban landscape peopled with sinister angelic figures in immaculate white -- the Salafist butcher with a bloody slab of freshly slaughtered beef -- is an allegoric vision of the sinless afterlife. Except that like Dante Alighieri's sublime Divine Comedy, Kassim's epic poem on canvas is ominous. Curious icons like KFC and the Facebook emblem, terrible temptations such as a plump pig, which the artist assures me, alludes to swine flu. The giant hen, too, has a hint of bird flu. Kassim's compositional approach is unequivocally arresting. "There is no terror in the bang, only the anticipation of it," observes Hitchcock. By directing our gaze towards the highest heaven, the fearsome firmament, Kassim projects the onlooker as suffering from acrophobia in the extreme. The spectator's irrational dread of dizzying heights is all too apparent in Kassim's "Metro", reminiscent somewhat of Hitchcock's 1958 "Vertigo" with voyeurism galore. Acrophobia also prompts panic attacks in Kassim's "Snake and Ladder", but don't anticipate encountering "Vertigo" stars James Stewart and Kim Novak. The painting features more mundane matters -- loaves of bread and a colossal pizza, serpents, policemen and an empty throne. Do not contemplate cameo appearances of Kassim as Hitchcock does in his classic films. Expect instead to come face to face with Mubarak in the guise of a black and white Cairene taxi in "Conflict". The ex- Egyptian president is portrayed not as a cab driver, but as a chess player with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) as his playmate and the masses in eye- catching crimson engaged in a deadly game of checkmate. In Kassim's perception of the 25 January Revolution there is greater complexity than on the chessboard. The pawns are people, ordinary folk, and the symbol of death in ancient Egypt -- Anubis -- sits patiently his pointed ears erect, ready to pounce on the fallen pawns. SCAF restrains the blue-black jackal with an extra heavy golden choke chain collar. Replete with symbolism, there is something of a stage set. SCAF also crops up in Kassim's "Metro". The irony is that the soldier in question sports a skirt. This curious painting leaves you "Spellbound", precisely like Hitchcock's1945 classic. The spectator wonders, though, whether the soldier in a skirt is amnesiac Gregory Peck or psychoanalyst Ingrid Bergman. The colour scheme is curiously implicative of the dream sequence designed by Salvador Dali. It is as if Kassim's canvas masks a yearning for a viscous mass. "Conflict", in sharp contrast, could be interpreted as the Old hands' advice for bright young revolutionaries -- in red. If "Conflict" followed Hollywood or Hitchcock's rules then the rest of Kassim's latest solo exhibition Politica would not follow a predictable narrative. Overflowing with the depth of delusional perspectives this ingenious artist leaves the onlooker with no choice but to crack the colour code. A light palette here and a touch of emphatic colour there, and the whole highlighting a new brushstroke technique that inculcates the subjective fantasies of this young and impressionable artist that are unanswerable to reality. Policemen are the most powerful princelings in "". Eternal Egypt itself appears illusory in a surreal manner in "" and the country, restless and troubled, seems to bode only ill at this particular historical juncture that the artist depicts. The terror in Tahrir Square metamorphoses into a fleeting mirage, an image from a nightmare. "She is asleep, yet she takes the shape of the city," Kassim extrapolates. "She is not three women, but one". She reclines lazily in three different sleeping positions. I come face to face with Hitchcock's 1939 "The Lady Vanishes" in "". The woman, or women, in question are like Dame May Whitty extremely difficult to spot. Bandrika, Hitchcock's fictional country, is Egypt on the eve of the 25 January Revolution. Dame May is Gulliver, prepared for the guillotine. The police princelings peeing all over and pushing women about are Lilliputians. SCAF is incubus, perhaps impregnating the woman in her hideaway, a fabricated Pandemonium, namely Egypt. The painting shows how Kassim applies his brush to society's open wounds. Incubus, the demon in male form, lies upon his victims, the passive female sleepers. Yet the sleeping female is Succubus. Like Lilitu, the ancient Mesopotamian female demon, she visits men in their erotic dreams with the most disastrous consequences. Much as in Hitchcock's penultimate film "Frenzy", this particular painting speaks a language that touches upon layered levels of consciousness and catalepsy. The woman represents the temptations of Eros incarnate. She is held in thrall by the unsatisfied desire of the demonic policemen and security agents who take the forms of some wicked incubi indulging in ruthless assaults on the unsuspecting women. They bear no relationship to each other. "I had painted this particular work without policemen, and only added the soldiers after the woman was beaten in Tahrir Square," Kassem tells me nonchalantly. The woman at the eye of the political storm that engulfed Egyptian bloggers and media workers is none other than the inspiration for his work. "There are a handful of democratically elected women in our Parliament. What does that tell you about our society?" Kassim here touches a raw nerve. One soldier is seen pissing on a woman, or is he ejaculating? Kassim is trenchant in his observations of what needs to be done. At times, he appears to be mounting a deliberate onslaught on all tenets of religious morality. "Pac-Man" is suggestive of Saint Augustine's The City of God. This symbolic arrangement so disquietingly dominated by a cluster of conservative religious values, Kassim's Pac-Man is shrouded in expressive impasto brushstrokes. The KFC brand and flying saucers stand like sceptres of a futuristic age sprinkled with fancy chrystalised shapes. So too is "Driver", oil on canvas, that is counter-pointed by the policemen, the crowd control freaks from outer space. While playing a leading role in "Media" also oil on canvas, stars Batman who assumes the role of Hitchcock's 1956 "The Man Who Knew Too Much". I cannot pin down Doris Day, but Stewart is a fixed point of reference on the canvas and displays measureless energy. In this painting he, disguised as Batman and motley policemen, is the centre of Kassim's visual world. Yet I can almost hear Doris Day singing the theme song Que Sera, Sera -- Whatever Will Be, Will Be -- and that song sums up Kassim's thematic concerns in Politica. Kassim's exhibition Politica at SafarKhan, Zamalek, runs through 24 February (see p.22)
