Given that we’ve dropped in unannounced, Hassan Sharif is being extremely accommodating. It’s the second day of his new solo exhibition – almost unbelievably for the man who represented the UAE at the Venice Biennale in 2009, his first in the capital – and, apart from him, his work and us, the clinical, high-ceilinged temporary space next to Qasr Al Hosn is empty.
Surprisingly austere in appearance for someone whose creative remit is so chaotic, the smartly dressed, bushily moustached artist seems unfazed by the slow footfall on the second day of Experiments & Objects 1979-2011, and takes the lull as an opportunity to offer us an unexpected personal tour of the exhibition.
First up, we move to the far corner of the room to examine what looks like a series of failed Blue Peter dioramas, with cardboard tubes, crumpled newspaper and bits of string attached to each other and doused in paint with minimal precision. These, Sharif explains, are his attempts to visualise a series of 29 poems sent to him by a friend two years ago; to turn words and speech into something physical and tangible. As he talks, it’s clear Sharif doesn’t approve of the glass cabinets in which much of his work is enclosed. This is art that’s been designed to be interacted with – performance, he explains, is vital to him.
Already, the man and the work seem less like polar opposites. It’s still difficult associating a person so gentle and meek in his manner with such brashly coloured, eccentrically assembled sculptures. But as he begins to explain his intentions and motivations not only do his sculptures seem less arbitrary and infantile, but it also becomes clear that Hassan Sharif is one of the most complex and significant avant garde artists the UAE has ever produced.
Next, it’s the show’s centrepiece – a gigantic bundle of foam sandals, each one in some way deformed by scissors and bound with wire. Standing around 10 feet high, the viewer’s immediate response to this multi-coloured mess of useless, garishly coloured footwear is ‘why?’ Paradoxically, this seems to be entirely the point. Since they both render the sandals useless, Sharif explains, the acts of cutting and tying with wire contradict each other, making the sculpture an unapologetic monument to frivolity. It’s a process the artist likens to drawing a line with a pencil and then immediately erasing it. The previously poker-faced 60-year-old is audibly giggling now. ‘I just want to play!’ he tells us, ignoring the opportunity to validate interpretations of anti-commercial commentary that others will inevitably attach to his work.
Others are bound to accuse Sharif, who’s accumulated hundreds of these functionless, often unsightly bundles over the past 40 years, of merely being an obsessive hoarder. However, as he reveals to us during our tour, he employs a production team to carry out the painstaking manual work for him, insisting – as Warhol, Hirst and many others have – that the creation of art lies in the birth of the concept.
Away from his ‘objects’, the show’s ‘experiments’ – photographs documenting various pieces of performance art Sharif carried out during the 1980s – are equally intriguing, and range from the simplistic (‘Jumping in Desert’) to the shockingly bizarre (‘Hair and Milk Bottle’). The pictures might strike some as twee and banal, but we challenge anyone to study the photographs of Sharif and his men digging holes in the desert and standing in them not to raise a smile at the sheer, carefree whimsy of it all.
Certainly, some will scoff at the apparent lack of poignancy, the absence of some grand message and the wasted opportunity to broadcast something really profound. But then we suspect those people are simply bitter that they’re not able to spend their days, earn their livings or make their statements as playfully as Hassan Sharif.
Experiments & Objects 1979-2011 runs until June 17 at a temporary gallery next to Qasr Al Hosn, Al Nasr Street. Entry is free.
