Abdus Salaam

Abdus Salaam, born 1989 in Cape Town, South Africa is a cultural fusion of Western, Eastern and African sensibilities. Having formed his earliest memories on a farm, spending time painting and sculpting with natural materials in the mountains of South Africa with his mother, he unexpectedly moved to Los Angeles at age ten where he would spend his formative teen years delving into the arts, extreme sports, and western cultural realities. Since 2010 Abdus Salaam has worked and lived mostly in Cape Town.

Abdus Salaam is a self-taught multi-disciplinary artist inspired by natural beauty, ecology and spirituality. Salaam reveals a sensitivity to three-dimensional spatial expression and the metaphysical connotations inherent in nature, materials, forms and colours. Contemporary in his mystic abstraction, his work is rooted in poetry, calling from a familiar place to a state of peaceful and intensive longing - often using materials to explore the immaterial and always working alone so as to imbue his intention into every fibre of his work. Moving freely between mediums – from sculpture to painting, video, photographic 'light paintings’, poetry, augmented reality, and music – he creates poetic worlds, from the intimate to large-scale installation. 

Salaam’s “Heartwood” tree ring works are a meditation on the heart unseen via the poetic beauty of trees as well as an ongoing dialog regarding the ecology of invasive species and their relationship to migration and notions of belonging. By focusing on the natural formations within, Salaam refers to our capacity for abstraction, growth and our shared malleable form. Just as trees are moved by wind, sun, and even those around them, we too are shaped by the symphony of life that surrounds us. Using sections of a fallen invasive old growth tree, sliced to reveal the growth rings Salaam suspends pigments in resin, pouring layer upon layer in a gradient binary of dark and light like the rings of summer and winter that define the life of a tree. Here, Salaam employs a brightening toward the centre void or ‘heartwood’ of each piece. The artist explores the benefits and inherent beauty that even an invasive species contributes to its earthen home and ecology, questioning ideas of belonging and what it means to be invasive or native, a question that is personal to the artist as one who focuses on deep time and is himself a mixed European, African muslim.

Salaam’s gem stone and foraged sculptures are inspired by the natural changes of material over time and his own personal conceptual wanderings, imagining how the elements would shape an object over the course of millennia he follows the fractures and form of the stone like water, bringing out the natural beauty inherent in the stone. Similarly, his metal sculptures are defined by the process of the sculpture’s making. This dance of the real and metaphorical is constant throughout his practice.  

The artist's use of acrylic ink on canvas has become a staple of his oeuvre with works that focus on presence, the ephemeral, and creating depth with the utmost respect for the canvas as an object. His latest ink works titled ‘Shawwal' express not only the spiritual connection that the artist experiences with and beyond the earth, but also the sensation of moving through the Islamic calendar toward Eid al Fitr (عيد فطر) on the first of Shawwal (شَوَّال), the ninth month of the Islamic calendar and its relationship to birth, earth and rebirth. Here, the artist paints nine waxing and nine waning moons in acrylic ink with a watercolour technique on canvas. 

In the case of his ink series 'Here (Now)' the works serve to begin and end at the here and now as materially both the outer and inner realities of the work are a simple everyday canvas of vertical and horizontal strings that elude to the very fabric of the universe and the spiritual underpinnings of existence that are a balance of horizontal and vertical planes. These works are a progression within the artists practice in that most other works by the artist usually possess a binary of a darker outer reality and an inner sanctum while these works share the same tone and hue both outwardly and inwardly. Taking inspiration of the square form from the Ka'ba, the artist creates a series of squares that are possessed of meaning as a point of focus toward a reality that is both an aspiration and an omnipresent truth.

Salaam’s 'Seed Flowers’ and ‘Currently’ works which were made exclusively with a palette knife, and are an intersection of sculpture and painting were found during his three month residency at The Institute for Public Architecture in New York City between June and August of 2023. These works are inspired by the seeds of the maple tree, and an experimentation of the artist’s ambidextrous abilities. These works are a folding of time and form as the artist presents a seed as a flower and a flower as a seed - an ancient Sufic metaphor for life, death and our radiating efflorescent present.

Salaam’s oriented strand board paintings and 'Currently' works are a journey of discovery for both the artist and the viewer. Often painting with mineral earth pigments which he carefully forages and crushes, these works are meticulously painted, revealing the order inherent in this humble, seemingly disorderly building material. They are moments of visual unity, with each element dependent on every other element for both the narrative of the work, and the fundamental cohesion and structural integrity of the work. For the artist, each painting is a deeply transformative actuation of sacred monotony, with a single square metre taking up to 400 hours to paint. Inspiring contemplation, they are a poetic reflection of oneness, our interconnectedness, and our dependence on each other. 

Salaam continues his exploration of oriented strand board as a medium with his gilded works that serve as a material juxtaposition with a focus on transcendence. The board is enriched by the artist’s intuition and application of our most coveted earthly material in leaf form, gold/platinum, a material known for possessing deep historical and other worldly connotations. By using multiple different gilding methods Salaam creates an experiential three dimensional space of movement that glows and reflects whatever stands before it. Engaging with such an unusually large object of seamless pure 24ct gold/platinum, the artist intends to invoke a primordial physical and spiritual sensation. The works are metaphorical windows into the realm of souls where forms and relationships between bodies imply movement, ascension, descension and togetherness all while being of a material that will not tarnish, fade or oxidise over time.

Drawing on action painting and gestural abstraction, Salaam’s thickly layered smeared paintings reveal a spontaneity, a surrender to chance and the sculptural elements inherent in painting. After days of preparation, Salaam pours up to 15 litres of paint onto a large canvas, and in a focused gesture, creates thick works in a single movement as the paint starts to dry. Similarly, Salaam creates ‘light paintings’, working in the darkroom with chemicals and instinctual gestures in a homage to the origins of photography and intuitive creativity. 

Salaam’s work looks beyond tropes of outer struggle, instead focusing on unity and on the expansive spiritual inner realities of beauty, peace and striving, as they relate to nature and our shared human experience: sharing the ecstatic love of being alive and being together.  

Upcoming:

2024 March / Nirox Sculpture Park Residency, South Africa.

2023 November / Abu Dhabi Art, UAE (Solo) with THK Gallery.

Currently:

2023 October / Liminal States, THK Gallery (Group), South Africa.

Past:

2023 August / Enter Art Fair, Denmark (Group) with THK Gallery.

2023 July / Art Figura Sculpture Prize Exhibition Schwarzenberg Castle Museum, Germany.

2023 June-August / Institute for Public Architecture Residency, New York City, USA.

2023 Art Figura Sculpture Prize Nominee, Schwarzenberg Castle Museum, Germany.

2023 Institute for Public Architecture Grant Recipient, New York CIty, USA.

2023 February / Künstlerstadt Kalbe Winter Campus Grant/Residency, Kalbe Milde, Germany

2022 November - May / Seed of the fig (Group) What If The World/Krone/Reservoir, Tulbagh, South Africa.

2023 Künstlerstadt Kalbe Grant and Residency recipient, Germany.

2023 February / Investec Cape Town Art Fair with THK Gallery

2023 SAFIM, Cape Town, South Africa

2022 December / Synaptic, THK Gallery, Cape Town

2022 November / Solo Booth at "Abu Dhabi Art," UAE, with THK Gallery

2022 August / "Enter Art Fair" Copenhagen, Denmark with THK Gallery

2022 May / "The Space Between" (Solo) THK Gallery Cape Town

2022 February /  Investec Cape Town Art Fair - Tomorrows/Today solo booth SOLD OUT

2021 "Mashura" (Group) Greatmore Studios, Cape Town, South Africa.

2021 "Falls Of Abundance" (Solo) THK Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa.

2021 “Tell Me Three Things About Yourself” (Group) Jaffer Modern, Cape Town, South Africa.

2019 “Unresolved Category” (Group) Gallery MOMO, Cape Town, South Africa. SOLD OUT

2019 “The Ocean of Limitlessness” (Solo) AVA Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa.

2018 “Foto Fest” (Group) Addis Foto Festival, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.   

2018 “An Experience - Namibia” (Solo) V&A Waterfront, Cape Town, South Africa.

2018 “Throwing Shapes” (Group) SMITH Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa.  

2018 “The Ocean of Limitlessness” (Solo) The Castle, Cape Town, South Africa. 

2017 “The Ocean of Limitlessness” (Group) Amplify Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa. 

2017 “Mercy” (Group) Amplify Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa.

2017 “An Experience - Namibia” (Solo) 

V&A Waterfront, Cape Town, South Africa. 

2017 Residency at Amplify Studio