Abdulrahim Sharif

“Working for nearly 40 years as a professional artist, my research on the subject of immortality in art, drew me to three important elements of creation; behaviour, pulse and entity. The combination of these elements became the point of the birth and rebirth of the soul of my painting in multiple layers of voice and gesture; of energies, thoughts and emotions that lie behind the physical nature of things. I believe that immortality in art is achieved when both physical and mental energy unite in the process of creation, which brings me to a conclusion: it is not what we paint but how we paint” - Abdulrahim Sharif 2013, Kingdom of Bahrain

For Bahraini artist Abdulrahim Sharif, art is all about the challenge of creating masterpieces, and the pursuit is far from over. Over the years, his outstanding oeuvre is punctuated by regular returns to figuration with portraits, still life and bathtubs that hover on the boundary between the abstract and the figurative.

This exhibition of hard-edge painting in artbahrain.org’s online gallery (currently on display at the Russian Art Academy in Moscow is anchored by five massive installations – “Doberman”,  “Face & Bathtub”, “Master and Monkeys” and “The Thief.” Each of these painting creates a distinct visual world and displays a different facet of Sharif’s social conscience.

When seen firsthand, the paintings are overpowering. The surface is cumbersome with bold impasto; there are explosive splashes of color and activity. The gesture feels violent and visceral. Yet despite his penchant for esthetic aggression, there is an infectious sense of liberty and idiosyncrasies within the overall flow that make these paintings tend toward formal elegance.

“I worked on something today; it knocked everything out, it’s a masterpiece”- Abdulrahim Sharif 2013, Kingdom of Bahrain

The spatial depths and textures are strengthened by the use of chromatic color that comes directly from Sharif’s abilities and vision which allows for a certain originality and freshness that enables him to leave his fingerprint on whatever he does.

Part of what is interesting in his paintings is that the viewer is drawn into a cognitive engagement. In each work, no matter how clear the title and the representation of the subject is there is a current of visual metaphor that makes the viewer realize that painting is fundamentally an art of subliminal exchange.

Aware to the major movements in 21st-century art, Sharif knows what he wants to do and how to go about doing it. While the ever-accelerating artworld continues to produce and reproduce art in various mediums, objects or ready-mades – the self-directed Sharif maintains to create pictorial pleasures from the traditional oil paint, a limited medium that never cease to endow his paintings with incredible power and emotional rawness largely absent from the art world these days.

Since his childhood, Abdulrahim Sharif has not stopped thinking in paint and still manages to make painting seem both a revelation and a mystery, a soulful respite from our fragmented present.

BIOGRAPHY

At the tender age of seven, AbdulRahim Sharif (b.1954) knew painting was his life. His fascination with painting was inspired by the early masters’ work printed on chocolate boxes. His play time was spent painting and copying masterpieces. Growing up, postcards and greeting cards continued to inspire him to paint. At the age of 12 he started selling his artworks in a bookshop in Manama. Unknowingly this budding artist’s obsession with the masterpieces would be the driving force behind his future masterful creations.

In the late 60s Bahrain was active in visual arts. High school art teachers were keen on developing young talents and encouraged interscholastic art competitions. And Sharif was an outstanding prodigy. Determined to develop his skills, he left for Paris in 1974 and studied Art at Ecole Nationale Superiere des Beaux-Arts, also known as Beaux Arts where he trained under the famous French artist Marcel Gili from the line of disciples of Auguste Rodin. As a student, he had a solo exhibition at the “Cite des Arts” and he actively participated in group exhibitions in Paris until 1978. He received the highest award in the National Drawing Competition between art schools all over France.

His obsession with the “masterpieces” brought about his research on the subject of immortality in art and led him to New York, USA, where he obtained his Masters in Fine Arts degree from Parson’s School of Design. There he made friends with contemporary American artists and exhibited at Parsons Gallery between 1980 and 1987.

Since his return to Bahrain, he had several solo exhibitions and participated in numerous international shows.  His paintings have been cited in Paris, Bahrain and the GCC.

Throughout his artistic career his quest to create “masterpieces” enabled him to produce distinctive series of highly charged chromatic paintings. Visual representations of figures, objects and landscapes on an untamed canvas was the battlefield of his psyche and personal memories, of collective consciousness with sparks of subconscious truth – a process of his journey to self-discovery.

In 2007, his thought provoking painting found its way to the art market in the world famous Christie’s Auction house in Dubai. His works were auctioned in several seasons which established his status as one of Bahrain’s outstanding artists.

Abdulrahim Sharif continues to actively work in his studio and works as a professor at the University of Bahrain.