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paintings
The imagery represented in the series of paintings completed in the last
five years or so have predominantly come from found sources. Mostly photographic
in origin these sources represent a constant theme of building narrative out
of found artifacts. For this reason the use of the descriptive quality of
photography was intended rather as a way of constructing the "fictive " through
elements of factual documentation. Dealing with themes of cultural and urban
decay, I have focused on images representing disintegration drawn from urban
sources with the intent of applying it as a metaphor for the other.
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drawings
As a secondary focus the works on paper, in general, deal with many of the
same concerns in regard to the paintings. Although set on a rather plain field
format many of these works on paper dealt with the investigation of the
nature/relationship of the elements themselves set within them. Like discarded a
rtifacts these references are gathered in order to find links and meanings between
them. For example during the process of one of the drawings. . .by
introducing a rather decorative element of a floral motif to the existing imagery I was
attempting to bring the imagery further into a unified focus, rather than
dilute it or contradict it. For the most part my aim for the works on paper in
general is to bring a more intimate view. . .a body of work that would celebrate
discovery through playfulness.
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Fresco Loss and Recollection
This series spun out of an interest in cataloging in drawings objects both
immediate (as in the studio) and far (from books and other sources). By
appropriating the imagery of the birds from various photographic sources I was
interested not in detached representation, ( despite the grid format and the neutral
background of the fresco) but rather a subjective approach. The use of both
the immediacy of the process, and the physicality of the fresco, as a way of enha
ncing this approach. In another word, both the awkwardness of the birds and
the architectural reference of a Fresco was a way of presenting the subject as
"real" using a language of equivalents.
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I am interested in making work that deals with history and in building
narratives based on its signs and patterns. I have strived to explore these
narratives with a sense of freedom and to work within a space that allows for the
experimental as well as the methodic. Working with elements from sources of past
and present, immediate and distant, my aim is to find connections in
oppositions - to arrive at a concise state within the seemingly contradictory realms of
the transparent and the concrete.
During the past several years, I focused on themes of exchange between nature
and culture. Out of this dialogue I began to investigate a symbolical
language of relationships between personal and external vocabularies. As a way of
further examining associations between the experienced and the imaginative, I
incorporated found media-images with immediate and personal sources. In some
cases for example, sketches and “scribbles” were collected and reproduced onto
the work in collaboration with other various appropriated elements. In much of
these works, the photographic elements provided an external point of reference
by which its main function as “factual objects” were used in construct of a
“fictive”space.
Working with a language of conflicting layers of displaced “cultural
artifacts,” has been a means of creating conversations, finding patterns and meanings - a way of finding commonalties within the disintegrative.
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Please request a slide sheet
or other information from
Sherif Habashi
831 North Second Street
2nd Floor, Rear
Philadelphia, PA 19123
sherif@sherifhabshi.com
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Master of Fine Arts in Painting
University of Massachusetts, Amherst MA, 1998
Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting
University of the Arts,
Philadelphia PA, 1994
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