Nader Sadek and Steve Tucker at Michael Steinberg Fine Art

Of possible interest to Matthew Barney fans, Egyptian artist Nader Sadek has collaborated with Steve Tucker (former frontman for the band Morbid Angel and the voice of "The Man in Black" in Cremaster 2) for the exhbition The Faceless opening September 6 at Michael Steinberg Fine Art, 526 West 26th Street, New York City.

Much like Barney's new Guardian of the Veil, Sadek's work juxtaposes the iconographies of Death Metal and Middle Eastern fundamentalism, which outsiders often associate with darkness, moon worship, and anti-Christian fervor. Says Sadek: "For a while now, I've been interested in exploring what different cultures perceive of as extreme. 'The Faceless' grows out of years of walking the crowded streets of Downtown Cairo dressed as a full-on death metal fan (i.e., long black hair, long-sleeve Morbid Angel/Deicide t-shirts, and an overall grungy look). Then, in a sort of twisted reversal, I decided to walk the streets of New York's Times Square in the black garb of a fully veiled woman."

"The intense reactions I got in each case confirmed for me the potential of this project. Those experiences inspired me to channel the popular paranoid fantasy in which the fully veiled woman is wrought from a dark death metal world, full of serpents, skulls, demons and dark mountains. I hope that by reflecting back to the audience their paranoid fantasies, which totally oversimplify the reality of Middle Eastern and death metal culture, that my work will get them toquestion their own prejudices and sense of the extreme."