Vardaxoglou Gallery Room #1719
Dallas Invitational, Fairmont Hotel, 1717 N Akard Street, Dallas, Texas, 75201

Shaan Syed discusses the Pakistani diaspora, miniature painting and the ever-present weight of the Partition of India

[Shaan Syed] takes the visual language of American abstraction (Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, Jasper Johns, etc) and smashes it into non-Western symbolism. Two works here depict the spiral minaret of the Great Mosque of Samarra in Iraq, but rendered as flat blocks, layered in steps; historic symbol becomes visual tool, a divider of the plane.