Lot L

Shaan Syed’s paintings are thorough investigations into simplified forms, texture and colour.  His paintings are recognizable in their tension between the graphic lines of hard-edge abstraction and gestural and personal mark-making.  Syed layers paint, saw-dust, and, at times, plaster onto the surface of the canvas in order to build up texture, while subsequently pulling it off and forcing it into neat and tightened up lines and sections.  Syed often references his own cultural background through his chosen motifs, inserting a nuanced and more pluralistic reading into abstraction.