Hassan Sharif: Gathering

Alexander Gray Associates, New York presents Gathering, an exhibition featuring large-scale sculptures and works on paper by Hassan Sharif (1951–2016), a trailblazer of conceptual art in the Middle East. Sharif's body of work surpassed any single medium, ranging from painting and drawing to performance, political caricatures, and assemblage. The works on view challenge established binaries of order and chaos, tradition and modernity.

The monumental works in Gathering imbue everyday materials with a poetic sensibility. Created during Sharif’s final years, they are part of the Objects series he began in 1982. Sharif likened his hands-on assembly process to weaving, framing his intuitive methodology as a contemporary iteration of traditional handicraft. His use of industrial materials and consumer items responded to the rapid economic growth and demographic transformation of the UAE during his lifetime. However, his Objects neither explicitly critique nor celebrate these changes, which radically altered the built environment and social fabric of Sharjah and Dubai, where he lived and worked. Rather, Sharif adapted longstanding traditions to reflect the new material culture and economic ascendance of the UAE following independence in 1971. As Sharif said, “My work gives the viewer a chance to look again, to rediscover everyday reality.”

 Gathering attests to the wide range of materials present in the Objects series. Some are composed of industrial implements, such as Weave 4 (2013), where Sharif braids black rubber and white electrical wire into a frenetic tapestry. Others use utilitarian products, as in 555 (2016), an aggregation of one thousand aluminum food service pans that Sharif bends and binds together with copper wire to form a sprawling sculptural system. In works like Hats (2016) he foregrounds mass-market consumer goods—hundreds of circular-brimmed sun hats are tightly bound into a weighty spherical mass and suspended from the ceiling. In all these works, the utility of the object is rendered obsolete. As Sharif explained, “I take a product to my studio and the first thing I do is remove its use. So it cannot be used for the purpose it was created for. I cancel its usefulness. Then I add another material to it, so it becomes a work of art; an object.”

Sharif approached traditional media like drawing and painting with the same exploratory mindset. He devised geometric compositions according to chance, exploring the boundaries of creative expression while critiquing institutions and social systems. Sharif remarked that his work could be made by anyone, reflecting an egalitarian outlook that informed his role as a mentor to younger generations of artists in the Gulf region through his hybrid studio/salon The Flying House. This intergenerational and transnational context gave his practice social relevance that transcended nationality, partisanship, and ego. As he explained, “The goal of my artwork is to further bind the close relationship between ‘making—cultivating,’ in order to condition the thinking of the individual-in-society.” For Sharif, art was an instrument of disruption and a tool for cultural dialogue through which, “one might embrace all human development and events from all facets of life without discrimination and hesitation.”

The artist’s work was the subject of a 2017 retrospective, Hassan Sharif: I Am The Single Work Artist, at Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE, which traveled to the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany (2020); Malmö Konsthall, Sweden (2020); and the Musée d'art moderne et contemporain de Saint-Étienne Métropole (MAMC+), France (2021). Sharif was a founding member of the Emirates Fine Arts Society and of the Art Atelier in the Youth Theater and Arts, Dubai, UAE. In 2007, he was one of four artists to establish The Flying House, a Dubai institution known for promoting contemporary Emirati artists. Sharif was also among the selected artists to represent the UAE during its first national pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009. In 2011, his work was the subject of Hassan Sharif: Experiments & Objects 1979–2011,a retrospective presented by the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture & Heritage/Platform for Visual Arts, UAE. Sharif’s work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions including After Rain, Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (2024); Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s to 1980s,Grey Art Gallery, New York University, NY (2020), traveled to McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, MA (2021); Tampa Museum of Art, FL (2022); Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (2022); and Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL (2022); The Creative Act: Performance • Process • Presence, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, UAE (2017); and But We Cannot See Them: Tracing a UAE Underground, 1988–2008, New York University Abu Dhabi, UAE (2017), among others. Sharif’s work is included in the collections of the Centre Pompidou, Paris; M+ Museum, Hong Kong; Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar; Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE; Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE; Museé d’art moderne et contemporaine, Geneva, Switzerland; Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom; and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, among others. The Estate of Hassan Sharif is also represented by Gallery Isabelle, Dubai; gb agency, Paris; and Galleria Franco Noero, Turin.