Modern Art Oxford’s incumbent exhibition, ‘Piercing Brightness’ by the London-based artist Shezad Dawood, is not for the casual viewer. Comprising two video installations and a number of ‘Paintings on Textile’, this collection is an intellectual and aesthetic assault on the senses.
However, this is not a dismissal of the artistic merits of the exhibition but simply a warning to those who might normally expect the art to do the bulk of the work. Instead, Dawood forces his audience into unexpected places, following channels of thought that confront ideas of racial integration, universal existence and transcendence of reality. The task is not easy but Dawood surprises us with his ability to transform MAO into his own playground of dreams.
The exhibition leads us through three distinct phases of thought, each one building on the previous until the final climactic film, which is both the culmination of the previous works and the apex of Dawood’s achievement here. Ascending the stairs to the first floor, one is plunged into an overwhelming darkness punctuated only by the sounds and sights of Dawood’s Trailer to the eponymous feature length film Piercing Brightness.
The film ‘tells the story of Shin and Jiang, a young Chinese man and woman, sent to earth from another planet to retrieve the ‘Glorious 100’’. Plot, however, seems irrelevant in this film of rapid cuts and hypnotic sequences, which features the repeated image of a hand stacking sugar cubes. The non-linear narrative forces the reader to forfeit their ingrained perceptions of film and embrace a fragmented vision of the world.
If the film achieves anything beyond the presentation of a chaotic existence, it is to suggest that whilst life is a continuous process, death is itself a singular event; the collision of human interaction, made explicit through the violent coming together of both characters in a road accident, reminds us of our own desire to communicate on both a verbal and physical level.
The second room is anti-climactic after the powerful imagery of his initial assault. A series of paintings entitled ‘Textile Painting’ is at best an examination of alternative texture in the medium of painting. Rather than building up layers with the paint, Dawood reverses the traditional process, painting flat blocks of colour onto undulating textile surfaces. Through pieces such as ‘Cosmic Egg’, a giant red egg-shape with a blue centre, and ‘Iris’, a similar shape but on its side, we can appreciate Dawood’s jokes on context and perception.
In all of Dawood’s paintings, the apparent randomness of the image is given meaning – whether sincerely or ironically – through the title. Thus he demonstrates the disjuncture between art and language in presenting images and ideas. In the final room, the distinction between art and life breaks down as we view this film. We can no longer be considered viewers but become active participants.
The film builds a visual and musical dreamscape in which modernity and tradition collide. The hypnotic effect of the Moroccan music, combined with the abstract images of light and the figurative representation of musicians, creates a meditative vision in which the film becomes for us a waking dream
By providing giant beanbags in which to rest while watching, the soporific effect is redoubled. The mystical elements of the film, coming to light as it pays its debt to Gysin’s Sufism-influenced Dream Machine, fascinate, but it is ultimately Dawood’s expansive vision that entrances. This exhibition will no doubt be condemned by those whose experience of art has been exclusively understood through the mediums of painting and sculpture.
Whilst I am the first to question the effectiveness of film as art, having seen many examples in which the potential artistic impact was lost in the excitement of technological modernity, Dawood’s films, especially New Dream Machine Project, rank alongside the most interesting one will ever see.
