Salem Alshamsi Decoding
Decoding by Salem Alshamsi
04.06.2023
Reading 3 min

Zidoun-Bossuyt Gallery Dubai is currently offering an opportunity to admire the paintings and sculptures of Abu Dhabi-based artist Salem Alshamsi. Curated by Mojgan Endjavi Barbe, an art curator who supports and promotes Iranian artists, his solo exhibition titled Decoding will be open to the public until 24 June 2023.

Alshamsi is a self-taught artist, a full time criminal lawyer, and a professor teaching Law at Sorbonne University. He also studied fashion at the Central Saint Martin College in London, UK, where he discovered a deep interest in fashion illustration courses.

Salem Alshamsi, Decoding (installation view). Zidoun-Bossuyt Gallery Dubai, 2023.

In his colourful artworks, Alshamsi blends repetitive patterns and geometric elements. Repetition is a meditative process which helps him empty his mind. The work’s meditative process also shows and lets him explore the interrelationship between time and space. As for geometry, he considers it a basic impulse for order, harmony and proportion. Being in love with the Arabic language, the artist’s works also feature Arabic calligraphy elements. “[…] The writing is reshaped in repeated patterns, grids, and minimalist shapes,” he said. “It’s like a starting point, but not calligraphy. It’s not something you can read, there are no visible messages.”

Alshamsi is inspired by geometrical abstract art and Op art, especially by Victor Vasarely’s and Francois Morellet’s work. Among the artists who inspire him are also Mostafa Abdel Moity, Mohamed Melehi, Mohammed Chabaa, Maysaloun Faraj, Zeinab Alhashemi, and Ebtisam Abdulaziz. To experiment with Arabic calligraphy in his art, he observes the works of calligraphists in the region, such as Ali Shirazi and Azra Bakhshayeshi.

Salem Alshamsi, Hidden Behind clothes, 2020. Acrylic on Canvas. 120 x 90 cm.

For Alshamsi, art is therapy, a way to channel emotions in order to rewrite them. “It is something to do with remembering as well,” he noted. In the art pieces displayed in the Decoding exhibition, the artist captured events which happened to him in the 90s until 2004 when he left the Emirates. In 2018, Alshamsi came back, and so did all those emotions: he felt that he had to do something with them. “I neglected things in the past and art helped me to put everything together and also to distance myself from them”, the artist said.

To learn more about Decoding, please visit the exhibition’s official web page.

You might also be interested in visiting Daniel Buren’s exhibition “L’Horizon, Infiniment, travaux in situ et situés”.