A Sense of Doubt blog post #1590 - THE SOLAR GRID - Ganzeer via LA Times
This post is really more for me than you. It's a giant reminder to me to really read The Solar Grid closely and in earnest. I have read it through, and I have been an avid reader of Ganzeer's newsletter -- Radio Frequency (details below), but I could not really explain it to you without re-reading it. So... it's time to re-read it.
Here's now you can read it, too.
https://thesolargrid.net/
READ!!
https://thesolargrid.net/Read
Here's how you can get in touch with and/or follow the art work of Ganzeer.
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And lastly, here's the LA Times article about him and his work.
He has since moved out of L.A.
"The
Banksy of Egypt" Moved to L.A. and Just Wants to Make Comic Books
TUESDAY, MAY 2, 2017 AT 7:32
A.M.
The year is 949 A.F. at the opening
of The Solar Grid, a comic book series from
multidisciplinary artist Ganzeer. A.F. stands for "after the flood"
and two young people are digging through an abundance of trash. They work under
the glare of the sun, searching for items that can be sold to big spenders,
using a shopping cart as both a carry-all and a mode of transportation.
Ganzeer was inspired
while in the midst of moving to Los Angeles about two years ago. Some bits and
pieces of what would become The Solar Grid came
to him during a brief stint living in New York, but the visual of the kids and
the shopping carts hit him as he looked for a downtown apartment. "You
pass through Skid Row and you see the contrast is insane. I haven't seen
anything like that anywhere. Ever," he says over coffee in Silver Lake,
the L.A. neighborhood where he settled after a little more than a year of
downtown life. "I've been to a lot of places. I've never seen anything
like that, where you have that level of severe poverty exactly right in front
of a place where people are going clubbing and partying and spending money very
nonchalantly."
When Ganzeer began
work on The Solar Grid, he thought it would be a four-issue
story with a fast-paced plot. Instead, the dystopian world he built kept
growing. He released the first issue in April 2016 and, to date, three
installments are available online. Altogether, this will be a nine-volume
story, with each piece of the epic ranging in length from 30 to 50 pages. Ganzeer
is currently in the midst of a Kickstarter campaign to fund the rest of the
series and, ultimately, release it as a hardcover book.
There are a lot of
issues packed into just that first chapter of The Solar Grid, from
destruction of the environment to racism and sexism to security leaks. It's
certainly reflective of the times, but there's also inspiration coming from the
artist's personal story. Ganzeer started thinking about what would become The Solar Grid as the refugee crisis became bigger
news. At the same time, though, he had just uprooted himself from Egypt, where
he was raised and where he began his career as an artist, to head to the United
States.
"When you're in
Cairo, you feel like that's the world, like you're enveloped in everything
that's happening there," he says. "Then you go to a place like New
York and everything revolves around New York. There is a complete detachment
from everything else happening outside in the world."
Ganzeer arrived in the
United States as a celebrated artist. In fact, it wasn't too long after his
move that he was profiled by The New York Times. NYC
culture website Animal referred to him as the "Banksy of Egypt." During the Egyptian
Revolution, Ganzeer took his art to the streets. He had already been showing at
galleries internationally, but this was the moment when his profile soared. In
fact, Ganzeer's arrest in connection to his art made news. As Ganzeer became better known, he fell into
a situation similar to bands that are expected to play that one big hit at
every show. The difference, though, is that Ganzeer's big hit was tied to a
major political moment in his home country.
"The point of
doing Egyptian Revolution stuff was it being part of the revolution and that
was it," he says. "If I'm doing something in an art gallery, I'm
going to do something that I think is appropriate for the audience of this art
gallery and the place and the time and so on. It's not about rehashing this old
thing that you think is popular and exotic and is going to sell or
whatever."
Ganzeer eventually had
his fill of the gallery world — "I don't really want people to say what I
should or shouldn't be doing," he says — and comics gave him a way to
express the ideas that were filling his head. He still shows his art; in fact,
Ganzeer is part of a street-art exhibition going on in Munich. Right now,
though, The Solar Grid is his focus.
"I don't really
want to do that very ephemeral, in-the-moment sort of art," he explains.
"I want to do something that could last for decades or years after it's
done, because that's what comics did for me." He name-checks V for Vendetta and The Watchmen as books that have greatly influenced
him over the years — "more than any singular work of art," he adds.
Despite growing up as a comic book reader,
Ganzeer didn't think that this would be the right art outlet for him. "It
is one of those things where I felt like I was never, probably never good
enough to do," he says. "I was reading superhero comics, mainstream
comics and then there's a particular house style, there's a school of how
you're supposed to do that."
Indie comics, though, showed Ganzeer that
there wasn't one way to draw stories, and The Solar Grid certainly
falls under that category. Ganzeer has been releasing the work on his own,
online, to a small following of readers. The drawback is that he is starting
over to build a readership. "I have people who are more interested in 'I
want the original drawing of a thing,'" he says.
Still, comics have been good for him creatively,
as he has more freedom in what he can do. Plus, he can explore the themes of
this project for a longer time than he would with an art show. The politics of
Ganzeer's work are still there — they're just changing with the times and the
medium.
Ultimately, Ganzeer wants to make work that is
more than an image. "And if it's going to mean something, there has to be
some kind of social or political context," he says. "There's no such
thing as art that means something without it being that. It's impossible."
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1906.28 - 10:10
- Days ago = 1455 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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