Nader Sadek “Living Flesh” Exhibit, April 22 in New York

Nader Sadek has penetrated the Decibel psyche in various, um, incarnations over the past few months, and the invasion has been most welcome.  In February, we teamed up with Metal Injection to bring you live performance clips from the Living Flesh DVD before you could buy it.  Now we drop some most righteous news upon your unworthy head, which we ourselves just found out this week:  On Monday, April 22nd, NYC’s Santos Party House will host an extraordinary exhibit and documentary screening, best described in the following press release:

Nader Sadek “Living Flesh” Exhibit

Monday, April 22nd (6 – 8pm) @ Santos Party House, New York, NY

“Flesh. Throughout Egyptian artist Nader Sadek’s recent constellation of works, flesh has predominantly symbolized the prehistoric origins of petroleum and its barely degradable derivatives. Exploring the political unconscious of the petro-world order, his sculptures, performances, and metal compositions stage the global trap of dictatorship, popular alienation, and near-cannibalistic self-consumption–a trap the Egyptian revolution has struggled to emerge from. The latest addition to Sadek’s constellation of works brazenly inverts, extends, and literalizes the symbolism of flesh as petroleum’s origin.

Up until now Sadek’s petroleum-based silicone sculptures have resembled freshly wounded skin, complete with bruises and swellings; in the wake of the the Egyptian revolution, Sadek has immortalized a piece of his own flesh. He has extracted strips of skin from his body and tanned them at a Cairo tannery, thereby suspending them in a state of limbo neither living nor decayed–an apt metaphor for the state of the Arab Spring. It also recalls Bibles of centuries past bound by human flesh, not to mention the macabre interior design of serial killers from the Third Reich to Jeffry Dahmer.

Rather than binding Bibles and lampshades, however, Sadek instead has bound his eponymous album: animal cast silicone shrouds the case which holds a signed test pressing as well as a wrapped LP, while his embossed, self-extracted leather functions as the album’s crest.

Sadek has recently released his debut live album + DVD (and followup to 2011’s debut full-length album “In The Flesh”), titled “Living Flesh,” recorded November 20th, 2011 also at Santos (Sadek’s motivation for choosing this location for his most recent installment), featuring guest musicians Flo Mounier of Cryptopsy; Rune Eriksen of Aura Noir, Ava Inferi, and formerly of Mayhem; Novy, formerly of Behemoth and Vader; and Steve Tucker, formerly of Morbid Angel, in his first ­and last live appearance for this project. These greats are joined by Sean Frey as guest live guitarist and Carmen Simoes on backing vocals.

The Santos exhibit will also feature a live screening of the surgical procedure that took place in the making of the “Living Flesh” installment.

Sadek’s work is also on display at Philadelphia’s Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania until July 28th. The exhibit features masks worn by Attila Cshiar during his performances with Sunn O))) and Mayhem. The masks were designed and fabricated by Nader Sadek in his NYC studio in 2007. Visit the gallery’s website here for more information.”

NSadek installment image

Yes, holy shit indeed.  With slack jaw and glazed eyes, the only question I can half-consciously formulate is:  See you there?