Hassan Sharif (Vereinigte Arabische Emirate)

Hassan Sharif - Since 1982 I felt there was a gap between conventional painting and conventional sculpture and I was intent on finding an alternative “work of art”.
I also realized that my sarcastic outlook on life was a result of my engagement in caricatures that critique the social and political condition and which were published in newspapers and magazines between 1970 and 1979. That in addition to the great influence which 1970’s contemporary art in Europe and America had on me.

These new intellectual and artistic theories were aimed at criticizing a life that revolved around consumption in all forms and the slew of negative effects it brought about on the individual’s thinking in society. I started to look at life with increasing skepticism, becoming more and more cynical by the day. It was this the new world order, whose slogan is “Adapt your aspirations to our ends – or else” that particularly irritated me, this vulgar market mentality that flooded shops with consumer products had so infiltrated the minds of individuals that it now controlled them as slaves to its greedy corporate tycoons.

The condescendence of the world’s major economic powers was more than obvious in the language of ‘third world’ countries or the more politically correct ‘developing countries’. The people of those countries were the primary victims of this devastating consumer society tsunami. So, I resorted to the idea of ‘redundant repetition’ in producing art. I would continuously engage myself in boring, recurring and endless activities, a feature that would become a signature of my artwork since 1982, underlying purpose.

Even if I’m working in the gap between painting and sculpture, sometimes I draw and paint using different subjects and multiple styles.

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