LAXART

LA><ART PROJECT SPACE
Sherin Guirguis: Qasr El-Shoaq

LA><ART is also pleased to present a new site-specific sculpture by Los Angeles-based artist Sherin Guirguis.

Guirguisʼ work references various contradictory elements, both formal and social. Having been  aised in Cairo and now living in Los Angeles, Guirguisʼ project investigates the frictions  between the contemporary and the traditional, the reductive and the ornamental. In  LA><ARTʼs Project Space, Guirguisʼ Qasr El-Shoaq, inspired in part by a pair of Bedouin  earrings, engages both formal and social concerns by juxtaposing the reductive Western language of minimalist aesthetics with that of Eastern Arabic ornamentation. Titled after the  second novel in Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy, Guirguis' sculpture pairs architectural   references of a specific Egyptian locale with the functional logic of one of its components--the  ashrabeya. These wooden screens used for windows, while operating as a  passageway between interior and exterior spaces, also delineate and distinctly separate these two domains. Like the mashrabeyas, Guirguisʼ sculpture bifurcates the space of the  gallery, generating a threshold between the public and the private, the flat and the  3-dimensional. Materially bold yet fragilely kinetic, Qasr El-Shoaq expands Guirguisʼ  navigation between two distinct worlds by giving shape to culturally divergent and opposing  elements; bringing formal and informal dichotomies in contact with viewers and with each  other.

Sherin Guirguis was born in Luxor, Egypt in 1974. She received her BA from the University of  alifornia, Santa Barbara in 1997 and her MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in  2001. Her work has been exhibited at Patricia Faure Gallery, Santa Monica; BANK, Los  Angeles; Project Flower Shop, Brooklyn and POST, Los Angeles. Selected Group shows  include Quickening, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tuscan; The Dreams Stuff is Made Of,  ArtFrankfurt, Germany and Las Vegas Diaspora, curated by Dave Hickey at the Las Vegas  Art Museum. Her work has been reviewed in the LA Times, Flash Art, Artforum and Artweek,  among other publications. In addition to her own work, Guirguis has also curated several  exhibitions featuring emerging artists in California. She currently lives and works in Los  Angeles.