The Knapp Gallery is excited to announce The Yousri Scrolls, a poetic and reflective show for the months of September and October.
This fall, The Knapp Gallery is eager to introduce Egyptian artist and Fulbright recipient Bassem Yousri to an international audience. The Yousri Scrolls will be the first opportunity for an American public to see these striking, exotic and evocative works in person.
Primarily employing papyrus and fire treated wood; the artwork of Yousri evokes Ancient Egyptian tomb murals and painted coffins. The bright pigments he applies contrast with the faded, worn surfaces of his canvases creating an attention-grabbing juxtaposition. Yousri’s elegant rebuff of modern surface treatment and style promotes the ideas and messages of a modern individual reflecting upon the rich cultural and artistic past of his Native country.
By utilizing the traditional materials and methods of his Egyptian upbringing, Bassem Yousri manages to promote a sense of timeless eternity in his works. He reconsiders historic themes and iconography to create a contemporary pastiche of techniques and images. Not simply an appropriation, Yousri’s artwork combines and heightens classic motifs by applying a fresh edge and discerning modern eye to the ancient and mythical symbols he draws upon. The method proves unforgettable, unique and attention grabbing.
We hope that you will join us for this international painter’s American debut!
Artist’s Statement
Since my childhood, Ancient Egyptian art fed my visual vocabulary with all sorts of spiritual and mystical imagery. A captivating sense of eternity is inherent in those artifacts emanating from deep faith in an after life. It’s an eternity that has been disrupted by colonizers from different eras starting with the Romans to the Arabs, French, Turks, and English. Today’s Egypt is a disorientated one between Islamic fundamentalism and cultural Americanization. The horizon is hazy and the color isn’t clear.
A lot of questions have been raised in my mind; amidst all the current cultural confusion, what’s left from those bygone traces of richness and fertility? What did time add or steal from that identity that was shaped almost 7000 years ago? Moreover, Could time itself be portrayed? Could its power of modification be grasped and understood? These are questions that initiated my new body of work I am presenting in this exhibition, in which I attempt to grasp the effect of time on objects, cultures and civilizations. The group of works is inspired by Ancient Egyptian art, especially the “Fayoum Portraits” which date to the Roman period, in the late 1st century B.C. or the early 1st century A.D. onwards.
My emphasis is on the material; I use papyrus, wood, and fire. The wood is beaten up and carved in the form of remnants or ruins. The fire has the role of shaping the pieces of papyrus, darkening parts of it, creating holes in other parts, and merging it with the destructive effect of time. I am not attempting to recreate older pieces or copy exact motifs; what I am undertaking is to reincarnate the effect of time, manipulate and watch it antiquating my most recent pieces in an attempt to experience and control its ability of alteration.
— Bassem Yousri
Egyptian icons
While Ancient Egyptian art was, in fact, a ritual towards the passage from death to eternity in the afterlife; Bassem Yousri derives from this art a distinct kind of symbolism that suits the postmodern age with its disbelief in eternity. Furthermore, divine hands cradled the Ancient Egyptian when he lived among his surrounding nature and community and practiced his religious rituals without knowing any kind of spiritual defeat. He was “living in the truth” as Akhenaton used to declare. Bassem’s people on the other hand, in which you find a 21st century amalgam of Eastern and Western taste, are deprived from that “truth” in it’s spiritual meaning; as life forces upon them a sense of alienation, loneliness, and psychological division and pushes them away from the embrace of the community and its collective consciousness. They remain lonely and separated even if they live among the crowds.
The papyrus that Bassem uses as the painting surface of his iconic portraits brings us back to that ancient age; the age of the birth of consciousness. The profile views of the portraits, with their repetition and steadiness, also emphasize the same connection with the past. The faces don’t carry a specific expression; they are more symbolic than representational. With this steadiness and the decadence of the surface under the effect of fire, a strong allusion to the meaning of time and the ancient past is pushed forward, accentuating, at the same time, the psychological fragmentation of the human being in our age, even if his outside is tinted with bright vibrant colors that Bassem might have inspired from his Eastern taste.
This is how Bassem’s figures and paintings are forged into some kind of contemporary icons. They reflect the human condition in a world where the principles of a civilization are destroyed under the heavy rock of pragmatic values while a strange nostalgia constantly guides mankind towards the power of the unknown, leaving him psychologically shattered. His lips are struggling between the desire to scream or ultimately remain silent.
— Ezz el Din Naguib, Egyptian artist and critic
Bassem Yousri’s Paintings introduce us to a painter with exceptional skills. He manipulates them to formulate an artistic style of his own, inspiring from his country’s history and cultural heritage, exploring and emphasizing, at the same time, his identity. This fact becomes obvious when we observe his use of the strong contours that define his figures and shapes that often possess symbolic meanings. His contemporary compositions reveal a vigorous freedom in handling the surface, both, visually and conceptually. The use of Papyrus as a painting surface underlines a connection that has historic and artistic significance; his work strongly reminds of Ancient Egyptian art and initiates an intimate conversation with it.
This formula signifies a sense of maturity and awareness of the path Bassem has chosen for himself. His career will definitely evolve through the constant experiments he is doing in his painting parallel to the body of work he is presenting in this exhibition. These two facts show us that Bassem understands that making art under the shadow of globalization doesn’t have to erase the artist’s fingerprint or take away his artistic personality; his identity. Moreover, he realizes that a true artist avoids being a repeated copy from others; he strives to represent his own point of view. This is what makes his work a real addition to the world of creativity.
— Dr. Sabri Mansour, Painter and instructor at the School of fine arts in Cairo, Helwan University.