​A Prime Activity - Mohammed Kazem Exhibition

Kazem’s third solo exhibition at Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde highlights his paintings, a relatively unknown aspect of his practice. As well as recent works, the show will include early water colours from the 90's largely inspired by the atelier of his fellow Emirati artist Hassan Sharif and featuring much of the conceptual thinking evident in his 3D work.

Under the title ‘A Prime Activity’, Kazem removes and disrupts perspectives. He is perhaps best known for his large scale and interactive installations. Certainly, when he has exhibited on international stages, Kazem has reached for powerful and three-dimensional ways to exhibit his ongoing interest in social impact on the spaces around him. It is for this reason that his third solo exhibition at Gallery Isabelle Van Den Eynde is so interesting. It focuses on his paintings which often gave way to a greater interest in texture and surface.

Kazem originally began to paint in an impressionist style, moving on to post-impressionism and finally adopting abstraction. Kazem has been painting since his late teens, went on to win the first prize in painting at Muscat Youth Biennial in 1990 and loved the surface so much that he remained consciously aware of the inspiration coming from the medium itself. He plays with textures, and he is more aware of colours and how they can be used, not in the painted objects themselves.

This GIVDE exhibition features work from the 1990s, when Kazem was still working and developing under the guidance of artist Hassan Sharif who encouraged him to experiment with pigment and tone. He painted his studio and other every-day objects with an emphasis on light and shadow, which can clearly be seen as forerunners for later series where he captures light with his camera lens and focused on shadow and angles.

This exhibition also features a new series, Neighbours (2018) comprising flat paintings that conjure up dimensionality through technique. Kazem has depicted the lines of brightly colored buildings in his immediate neighbourhood juxtaposed with the blue sky. The geometry of space and also the focus on mundane objects that show traces of human imprints upon our environment combine to make these paintings arresting in their simplicity.