UNTITLED, ART Online: Booth A9

Carbon 12 is excited to announce its participation in UNTITLED Online, with new works from Sarah Almehairi and Bernhard Buhmann.

The booth charts the conversation between the works of artists Bernhard Buhmann (b. 1979, Austria) and Sarah Almehairi. (b. 1998, UAE). In rejection of the flat, two-dimensional surface, the artistic practices of both artists commune together in their utilization of raw, undiminished form. The developed and refined visual parlance of both bodies of work push the boundaries of the differing media they exist in; Buhmann, through the adept manipulation of shape and layering of paint, and Almehairi, through the palpable discourse introduced by the structures that her work navigates across. 

Brief impressions of evocative shape and form are veiled and unveiled within the artworks of Bernhard Buhmann and Sarah Almehairi. Buhmann’s canvases trace suggestive silhouettes, and Almehairi’s works frame parts that are reminiscent of stylized furniture, interlaced their in wooden intersections. These subtle intimations and nuances are embedded into the conceptual framework of their art, and constantly reinvent meaning and constructs of identity.

Characterized by their bold, geometric compositions, Bernhard Buhmann’s highly abstracted paintings are informed by his background in sociology. His works revolve around present societies that are bound by digital communication, and examine the unravelling of the individual self in a daily world that is perpetually saturated with new technologies. With sweeping gradients that mirror the precision of computerized graphics, Buhmann’s portraits are portrayed in a kaleidoscopic, new reality that is increasingly overshadowed by a fluctuating ego, which continuously floods and obscures evocations of the true self. 

Sarah Almehairi’s Building Blocks series concentrates on processes of assembling and reassembling to create and form meaning, which she explores through the physicality of her sculptural works. Made from found pieces of wood, Almehairi’s works embody a rhythmic, layered structure, and through this, acquire an organic, visual language amidst their strong materiality. By contrasting color against neutral tone, she builds substance from muted assemblages of wood, and simultaneously examines the construction of systems upon their destruction.