Shaan Syed
Shaan Syed (b. 1975 Toronto, Canada) lives and works in London UK. Shaan holds an MFA from Goldsmiths College (2006) London, and an Honours Diploma from the Ontario College of Art and Design (2000). Primarily concerned with painting, Shaan periodically expands his practice to include video, sculpture and outdoor postering projects. After relocating to London from Toronto in 2004, Shaan's work underwent a strong transformation. Using his history as a representational and figurative painter, Shaan became preoccupied with notions of absence versus presence, and the idea that a painting could be a rejection of the representational.
Along with receiving numerous grants from the Toronto Arts Council, The Ontario Arts Council and The Canada Council for the Arts, Shaan has won many awards and prizes for his work including the Goldsmiths College Warden's Purchase Prize (2006) and The Celeste Art Prize (Student Section 2005). He has been shortlisted on several occasions for the RBC New Canadian Painting Prize and was shortlisted for The Sovereign European Art Prize in 2007. He was also shortlisted for Canada's Sobey Art Award in 2004. Shaan has participated in artist residencies in Banff Alberta, upstate New York and Switzerland. He has held solo shows at PlugIn ICA (Winnipeg), The Art Gallery of Windsor, Birch Libralato (Toronto), Brown (London, UK) and Galerie Michael Janssen (Berlin). His work has also been included in The 2nd International Biennale of Contemporary Art Prague (2005), Jerwood Contemporary Painters 2010 (traveling UK), and in group shows at Mercer Union (Toronto), Bloomberg Space (London, UK), S1 Artspace (Sheffield, UK), Elementa (Dubai), DomoBaal (London, UK) and at La Salle de Bains Lyon).
Shaan is represented by Galerie Michael Janssen (Berlin).
Artist Code: 733
Videography
2004, 05:28 minutes, B & W, sound
2003, 02:24 minutes, B & W, sound
Critical Writing
by . The National Post, Apr. 10, 2004.