REVIEW: Mohammed Kazem's "Memorizing By Means of Observing" @ Taymour Grahne Gallery, New York
A second-generation Emirati artist, and protégé of conceptualist Hassan Sharif, Mohammed Kazem joined the Emirates Fine Arts Society in 1984 at age 15 and has been making waves ever since. Starting out as a painter and musician, Kazem has evolved into one of the Gulf Region’s leading conceptual artists, representing the United Arab Emirates in the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013.
His first one-person show in New York, held at Taymour Grahne Gallery at the end of 2014, was only his eighth solo outing since 1987. The exhibition offered an overview of thought-provoking photographic and video works made between 1997 and 2005, alongside a suite of his celebrated “scratched” paper pieces. These were also accompanied by two new photographs, documenting various chewing gum pieces stuck on the sidewalks of New York, which he connected with chalk marks.
