Oil on linen

Shaan Syed

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Shaan Syed’s paintings are thorough investigations into simplified forms, texture and colour. He employs a distinctive palette repeatedly into often large-scale paintings that become ongoing series. His paintings are recognizable in their tension between the graphic lines of hard-edge abstraction and gestural and personal mark-making. Syed layers paint, saw-dust, and, at times, plaster onto the surface of the canvas in order to build up texture, while subsequently pulling it off and forcing it into neat and tightened up lines and sections. He often scrawls his name or words documented over time into the canvas in English and Arabic, literally inserting himself and his personal narrative into a tradition of modern abstraction.