Strike

Overview

Hossein Sharif's work necessitates a state of respect, the silence born of struggle and conflict which has its acknowledgement in the human; the social and cultural catastrophe of the world. Commencing in 1975 with caricature, the satirical mode of address to evil and corruption, Sharif turned his attention to the frightening aspects of life and the banality of evil, as a story of violence and coldness disposed at the same time; man is sick and savage, in a search of freedom, one that at the same time violates the space-threatening freedom.

A human for Sharif is a simple man. He draws by means of a simple line in order to alter the synchronic sense in a viewer and break open another temporal idea. The act of breaking (the line, idea) implies some sort of change in the logic of synchronicity. He has made drawings of overlapping horizontal and vertical lines, forming squares and rectangles. The drawings are directly applied in charcoal on walls, unfixed and executed on the spot, remaining for only a few days, some partially erased. Iron wire is also suspended on the surface of walls or floors to transform the three dimensional into two. In this way shadow mixes with authentic lines drawn by hand on the surface. Sharif redeems and restores the forgotten or distressed objects of human use (tin, paper scrap, carton, wire, charcoal) to the activity of memory by simultaneously repositioning the viewer's perception in terms of the personal space of freedom that has been equally destroyed. This restorative process is the crucial economy of the work and its refinement, as signalling the hazard to the nobility of the human project and its continuation.

PL