Abdus Salaam

Abdus Salaam is a self-taught multi-disciplinary artist from Cape Town, South Africa. With works rooted in poetry inspired by natural beauty and spirituality, Salaam reveals a sensitivity to three-dimensional spatial expression and the metaphysical connotations inherent in materials. Contemporary in his mystic abstraction, his work calls from a familiar place to a state of peaceful and intensive longing. 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. 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 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 or ‘heartwood’ of each piece as seen across his practice - most notably his mystic landscape oil paintings on metal. 

Salaam’s stone sculptures are inspired by the natural changes of stone over time, 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 steel sculptures are defined by the process of the sculpture’s making. This dance of the real and metaphorical is constant throughout his practice.  

Salaam’s oriented strand board paintings are a journey of discovery for both the artist and the viewer. 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 identity and 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:

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

2022 December / Untitled (Group), THK Gallery, Cape Town

2023 February / Investec Cape Town Art Fair with THK Gallery

Past:

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.