Shakir Hassan Al Said: The Wall

About

Al Said describes the physicality in his painting as exaggerated traces and scratched surfaces of walls and manuscripts. The process of reaching the wall as a texture and looking for an exit (exutoire) when making a hole in it seems to reflect a passage beyond the wall as an obstacle, especially in the years 1990s during his multiples residencies in Doha. The political and spiritual dimension of his work took a stronger meaning after the second war in Iraq following the American invasion. The wall represented on a surface as an artwork, fragmented through the process of burning attempts to open a possible future.  The One-Dimension concept becomes a philosophy and a practice that lead to freedom of space and time together, prefiguring a more spiritual sense of existence.