Tag Archives: Sam Shendi

Age of waiting

“You are back” my youngest son beamed on Saturday morning. Despite explaining to him several times what was happening, he still hadn’t quite grasped the concept that Mama and Baba were going out and coming back on Friday night. I guess it is that age where waiting and the concept of time haven’t quite formulated yet. I can’t believe that in his whole 4 years we haven’t done this before but anyway I had managed to get the sculptor out. The incentive of course was sculpture related.

'I think this looks like it was designed for Ironman'
‘I think this looks like it was designed for Ironman’

Sometime last year my husband had excitedly taken 4 sculptures down to Shepperton Studios to put them on set for the new MARVEL film. We weren’t allowed to advertise this but I am certain I wrote somewhere about how he nearly ran back, he was so excited. The whole experience of being on set, walking in amongst Ironman and Hulk’s lab was like being a kid in a candy store. Can’t seem to find it on any of last years post and I have done enough trawling. The other thing it made my husband realise was how far he had come, from a small village in Northern Egypt to a multi-million pound blockbuster movie set. I think something sunk in.

So after what seemed like an ‘age’ of waiting. We finally went to see Avengers: The Age of Ultron on Friday all ready to spot Shendi sculptures on set. As the film began my husband whispered “what’s your gut feeling, do you think they will be in”? To be honest I grimaced, I don’t think so. I had been so excited and told so many people despite my usual ability to secrecy that I felt we weren’t going to see anything. The film was so fast and the screen so dark I saw nothing. We left a little disappointed, both at the film and lack of sculpture spotting, without seeing the credits role.

Advertising it on his facebook page anyway, the sculptor got a response from a friend who went to see it saying they saw his name in the credits. Really??? I think they might be joking. I still can’t believe it, and there is no chance I am going back to the cinema. So now we will have to wait again till the DVD comes out and we can physically stop start and pause the screen to see possible geometric shapes in the background and freeze frame his name. Seeing is believing in this case though I think.

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Sutra

A little capsule of culture entered my life yesterday which already seems like a dream, as it felt like a dream itself. Boxes like coffins or bathtubs, ships or tower blocks used in numerous imaginative ways. Effective lighting and manipulated shadows made for sculptural inspiration. A sound world of single cello, violin and piano made you lose all thoughts within a captivating display of movement from the monk marshal arts dancers. The opening of this show began with two figures like a Father and Son, Puppeteer and puppet or Creator and Man; sat on a box playing a game that becomes the performance, Sutra Dance Consortium. Have a little glimpse of it;

My mind, hypnotised couldn’t go past the minimalistic figure, the human form, the individual verses society. Conforming, confronting, obeying, order and uniformity. Isolated. As though it was all inspired by my husband’s piece;

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‘Isolated’
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‘Isolated 2013’

After the show my friends opened up another dimension of ideas, flowers, the world, creation, the creator, the pilgrimage. Endless possibilities. I wanted to hear the thoughts of all the audience, to tap into the fireworks of isolated ideas that bounced off this futuristic space and around our minds. I felt as though I had been thrown into a different world for a brief moment, the setting at The Lowry in Salford so different from my usual environment. The architecture, the light, the metal, the water reflecting a futuristic modern world polors apart from my green hills and muddy puddles, and daily life without wellies. We become isolated in our own world and forget there are others around us. It was a moment of inspiration a time to refresh, recharge and re-energize. Taken into another world of ideas and imagination.

Sam Shendi and Aleatoric Art in the 21st Century

I will be honest, I had to look up Aleatoric. I can’t even pronounce it properly.

Aleatoricism is the incorporation of chance into the process of creation, especially the creation of art or media. The word derives from the Latin word alea, the rolling of dice. Isn’t that all creation though that there will be a bit of chance that it works out alright?

Ray Cabarga writes, “Sam Shendi is an Egyptian sculptor, educated at Cairo University, his work has been exhibited in numerous countries throughout Europe and the Middle East. Sam’s modern approach to his Dadaist influences demonstrates an old-school philosopy with a futuristic feel. In a recent interview, Shendi reminds us to keep in mind that Dadaism spawned in the time of war and war still exists in our time, adding how this has had an impact on his work.” I think some of my husbands conceptual pieces are in tune with this but I am not so sure about the geometric, minimalistic human figures. 

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‘The words’
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‘Patience’

” A small group of international artists have formed a group called MAMA or the Movement of Aleatoric Modern Artists, a worldwide collaboration of chance-based artists who promote the principles and techniques of aleatoric methods in the execution of contemporary art in modern times.

The movement pays tribute to the DADAists of the early 20th century among the many other artists throughout history who have bravely chosen to relinquish partial control of their creative processes to the hands of fate, the laws of physics and the continuum of perpetual chaos which prevails over our universe by design. By learning to value and preserve that which we can never own, to respond and yield to that which we can never predict and to respect and trust that which we can never control, the aleatoric artist inherits the divine principle of acceptance, the creative process becomes a cooperative collaboration with the forces that govern the universe, and thus the aleatoric artist transcends the limitations of the mind
and body to reach artistic plateaus previously unattainable.”

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The book itself is impressive in volume, size and collection of artists, to look at the book click here. Whilst I am proud of my husband’s inclusion I feel it is a bit misplaced. His methods aren’t aleatoric, he isn’t rolling paint and seeing what happens. To see him in the creative process I am not sure that his work is a product of chance and that “they appear to be accidental by products of some elaborate process undertaken to produce a thing wholly unrelated to the art he is presenting”. Sounds great but in some ways the opposite is true. It is not such an elaborate process it is almost quite industrial and highly precise with the finished result exactly what he was aiming for , perhaps some will be “compelled to ask ‘what is it’?” however, I may be biased but I think they are very obvious. “Sam Shendi makes an audacious statement” simply put is, I think more accurate. After all, as I have written before nothing in the Shendi’s life is chance. It all has meaning. It is ‘Maktub’.