Egyptian artist Wael Shawky once said that “…art should be running after our own ignorance…” explaining that his artistic project arises from learning, particularly about how history has been constructed. In ‘Isle of the Blessed,’ the Egyptian artist’s current solo show at Lisson Gallery, Shawky presents a single-channel film and accompanying paintings that consider Greek mythology’s explanation of place names (e.g. Europa) as a way of deriving fact from fiction. Mysterious, cartoonish and a little haunting, paintings such as this one, ‘Isles of the Blessed XII,’ explore the boundaries between the fantastical and the real. (On view in Chelsea through Jan 14th).
