March 2, 2016
ABDULRAHIM SHARIF
Edge
Master of his artistic domain, Abdulrahim Sharif portrays a potent skill when handling his visual instruments, so deeply infused by a lustful and boundaries-free world of manipulative passion in discovering a new chemistry among colors.
With him, each notion or shape can turn into a body of interpretation, as for Sharif, subject matter needs minimal effort to be pronounced… Yet it is just a flimsy excuse to begin his journey of going after entangled lines and color tracts inter crossing aimlessly.
Annihilation is almost always the destination, with an edge clear in sight and another hidden in between color entrapment, and man as well, but perhaps not alone on edge; but probably in limbo of a dark and succumb-forced destiny, with humanity almost deformed out of terror and tragedies all storming Sharif’s imagination; bombs replacing flowers, terrified monkeys and dogs, sleeping kittens… and sharks, all orbiting his mind, disintegrating; or on the verge of extinction in a world yet to be.
Born in Manama in a multicultural neighborhood in 1954, he studies art in Ecole nationale superieure des Beaux-arts 1974- 1979, and he completed a Masters of Fine Arts at New York's Parsons School of Design in 1979-1981. Sharif is considered as one of the most leading artists in the Middle East, and one of the ffirst founders of the Bahrain Arts Society.
He started selling his work at a very early age. He started painting at the age of 6, and he was influenced by the master pieces that were printed on the chocolate boxes by the European artists. At the age of 12 he scored his first art sale and it continued since then. When he was a teenager he studied the techniques of the Spanish artist Diego Velazquez and the Dutch artist Rambrandt. Most of his portraits are inspired from different nationals around him since he grew up in a multinational neighborhood. He was too attached to American gangster films which shows in his multifultural background of being an Arab, Persian Indian, British, French and American.
His work has been exhibited in the Middle East, Europe and Asia, including solo exhibitions in Bahrain, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, New York, Sydney, Moscow, UK, and Paris.
Sharif is currently a lecturer and Art teacher in University of Bahrain.