New Currents: Dream Worlds
By ANNA LENTCHNER, ALEX YIU, CAMILLA ALVAREZ-CHOW
SAMO SHALABY, The 7000th Floor, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 120 × 90 cm. Courtesy the artist.
Samo Shalaby
Cairo/Dubai/London
Samo Shalaby’s paintings create worlds in which no desire or fear is beyond imagining. Masqueraders dance through baroque dreamscapes in his Figurative Theatre series (2021– ); a princess faints under the pink light of her chambers in The Other Woman (2023); thick, plush curtains of silk and velvet are omnipresent, as if Shalaby wants us to question his theatricality. Is this only for show, or does something more sinister lie beneath?
