Hassan Sharif Exhibition
Alexander Gray Associates
This event has ended.
Alexander Gray Associates presents Emirati artist Hassan Sharif's first solo exhibition in the United States. To introduce his work to a New York audience, the Gallery has organized a micro-retrospective of works spanning 30 years, including rare photo-documentation of early performance- and process-based projects, experimental works on paper, and two sculptural installations. Of note are photo-documents of the artist’s 1983 durational work, performed in the Hatta Mountain desert in Dubai.
Recognized as a pioneer of conceptual art and experimental practice in the Middle East, Sharif's artworks move beyond the limits of discipline or singular approach, encompassing performance, installation, drawing, painting and assemblage. Since the late 1970s, he has maintained a practice as a cultural producer and facilitator, moving between roles as artist, educator, critic, activist and mentor to contemporary artists in the United Arab Emirates and the broader MENASA (Middle East-North Africa-South Asia) region.
In her analysis of the cultural context for Sharif’s artistic practice, curator Catherine David notes, “...the overdue recognition of Hassan Sharif’s body of work is not lacking in ironies and misconstructions, especially given the different ways–the local and the international–in which the processes and the stakes involved in his oeuvre were met...if some think of Sharif today as ‘the father’ of modern art in the U.A.E., it is certainly from a viewpoint that takes into account the pioneering artistic experience and process that the artist developed amid (or, more accurately, on the margin of) a society where the conditions for the production and exposure of ‘modern art’ were not there.”
[Image: Hassan Sharif "Paper, Cardboards and Glue 2" mixed media (1996)]
Media
Schedule
from January 05, 2012 to February 11, 2012