Press Release

In his first solo show with the gallery, Shaan Syed presents life-sized oil paintings alongside screen prints depicting hand-written text. In conjunction, the works compel a revaluation of the critical paradigms supporting Western abstraction. Texts listing things such as an offering atan East London caf, “Eggs wayward Bacon Beans Chips Burger,” sound out from the same space as a protest sign (“Freedom to Starve”) and the artist’s full Islamic birth name, “Shaan Tariq Hassan-Syed.” Seemingly disparate in content, these reflections merge in a similar fashion to the bold wipes of Syed’s paintings echoing across the gallery walls. Like Arabic poems about wine written on ancient drinking vessels, a literal reading of his calligraphy misleads upon cursory glance. Their meditative quality emerges in its repetition.