Faris Alshafar: Everybody Changes Underwater

The first solo exhibition by Emirati artist Faris Alshafar features new oil paintings that mark his move from monochrome into colour. Says the gallery: “The works explore how we alter our appearance and behaviour in response to desire and expectation, whether internally cultivated or externally imposed. Palettes thaw from glacial to nautical to terrestrial before vaporising into placeless places. Forms are hung like marionettes across load-bearing negative spaces, held or erased by forces unseen, while glyph-like gestures evocative of shells, clock hands and candles recur from one painting to the next …Drawing on music, video games and everyday moments in which people change how they act and look, the paintings unfold like episodes, each with its own pictorial logic”.

Image: Faris Alshafar, Chocolate (2026, detail)

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