Basim Madgy
Friday, 3 April 2026
Work from Someone Tried to Lock Up Time.
“In the new series Someone Tried to Lock Up Time, Basim Magdy combines recognized objects of history with a poetic mysticism that invokes both alienation and a feeling of familiar complicity. The text acts like a measure of time, be it a philosophical exploration of duration and how to capture it or a seemingly random correlation of past events. The images carry out the same action of free association: a Fayyum portrait that dates back to Roman Egypt, a cyborg bird and an ocean surfer are all parts of the same narrative. Interested in time and processes of selective historicization, Basim Magdy asks what will be made of us when we are looked at from the future and what artefacts remain to tell our stories?” – Gypsum Gallery