Unexpected selection of drawings from Shawky; Marzouk looks at "The New World The Townhouse Gallery opened its doors last Sunday on its exhibit of new contemporary art, and viewers, mostly fellow artists and art critics have been piling in to see the work of two of the country's up-and-coming modern artists'. The upstairs gallery hosted the works of Wael Shawky - a selection of drawings by an artist renown for installations and videos. This was a nice surprise for his fans who did not know Shawky had this particular talent up his sleeve. "This is the first time I do this, Shawky told The Daily Star Egypt. "This is a collection of drawings I did from 1998 till now, most of them being sketches of ideas for my installations. Shawky uses graphite, pastels and silver pigments in his simplistic drawings. The ideas behind his drawings are the same as in all his art. Shawky likes to link different cultures together that are not naturally found in tandem, joining two elements that are not conventionally related. He especially likes to link nomad society with contrasting environments like agriculture. "I use a lot of camel humps, which I also use in my installation, which represents a source of energy. At the same time it represents desert society, he says. These drawings are the in-between stage between his subconscious and his final production. "Most of this stuff is conceptual more than it is aesthetically beautiful, says Shawky, although based on the compliments he was getting during our short interview, the artist was the only one unaware of the obvious beauty of his work. At the moment he is working on two films. The first is footage at Darb El-Arba'in (the Forty-Day Road) "a road that runs from Darfur to Assiut that was the pathway for African slaves being taken to Cairo to be sold over a century and a half ago. The second film is his first animated production, which has strong religious connotations. Shawky was born in Alexandria in 1971. He completed his BFA at the University of Alexandria, followed by an MFA at the University of Pennsylvania in 2000. Downstairs in the factory space in the Townhouse Gallery, Mona Marzouk uses the large walls to exhibit her works that are made up of characters that form living creatures, mythological beings and architecture buildings. The show is entitled, "The New World, and is the last of her work on a series she started in 2004 that includes The Morphologist and the Architect, Helmets and Black Gold Odyssey. The Morphologist and the Architect, 2003-4, was a series of paintings using acrylic on canvas that explores the possibilities of an imagined interface between mythology, the animal kingdom and manmade structures (architecture). Helmets, 2005, was a series of wall paintings that probed into the history of the helmet as a structure with its many different manifestations in the battlefields of war and sports, while making an attempt to link it to the world of creatures other than man. Black Gold Odyssey, 2006, was a mural project that attempted to visually recreate the links and missing ties between oil as a natural product, oil as an industry and nature on the whole by fusing elements related to the oil industry with characteristics that refer to living beings. The final part "The New World consists of an American flag that features, instead of stars, her erotic looking creatures. The idea of the new world is not a euphoric idealistic world, rather "to bring together something universal ... Taking from the past, present and do something for the future, she says. About using an American flag, Marzouk says she's, "just using it for structure, I don't mean anything political. Yet there is still a question mark as to why she uses the American flag for structure, not the Egyptian one for instance. Marzouk explains that she first did this exhibit for a show in New York, but admits that it inspires political assumptions whether she likes it or not. After finishing her art studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf, Germany, in 1996, Marzouk returned to her hometown of Alexandria to launch her professional career in painting and sculpture. Marzouk s earlier work was largely an attempt to deconstruct the history of architecture and rebuild it using notions relating to post-colonial and post-modernist theories. Town House Gallery of Contemporary Art10 Nabrawy St., off Champollion St., Downtown, Cairo(02) 576 8086Open until Nov. 29.10:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m. and 6-9:00 p.m.
