“Experiments and Objects” was co-curated by Sharif acolyte and artist Mohammed Kazem and Middle East art advocate Catherine David, of Documenta 10 fame. Comprising more than 150 sculptures and installations, the show knowingly foregrounded the experimental dimension in two distinct currents of the artist’s work, namely the titular “Experiments” and “Objects.”

“Experiments” covered Sharif’s Fluxus-inspired “actions” from the early 1980s: banal, tedious acts that were documented photographically. Initially performed in London, where Sharif attended art school, and later in the Dubai desert, works such as Walking No. 1 (1982) and Throwing Stones (1983) established the artistic use of repetition, banality and futility that became his hallmarks. One standout was the strangely intimate Hair and Milk Bottle (1984) in which the artist, after having plucked a pubic hair from inside his trousers, attempted to toss it into a bottle, which was sealed upon the act’s success.

Echoing the purported pointlessness of his “Experiments,” Sharif described his “Objects,” begun in 1984, as illustrations of meaninglessness. Taking Duchampian philosophy to heart, they were crafted from commonplace materials, cut, bound or tied together with rope or wire, and thus stripped of their original function. The intestine-like rolls of Newspaper 1 (1984) or the stringy rings of Jute, Cloth and Rope (1985) were clumped on the glass-enclosed shelves of the Qasr al-Hosn alongside more machine-aided variations of the same technique, such as Punched Cardboard in Plastic Bags (1986), comprising cardboard sheets punctured by an office paper puncher.

A concentrated series of “Objects” from the mid-1990s seemed somewhat apart, as distant from the agglomerative clusters of the’80s as they are from the mass-produced urban flotsam and jetsam that would follow. The piles of writhing, vaguely phallic shapes severely constrained by wire in Jute and Wire (1996) and Cotton and Wire (1996) implied sexual tension and latent violence.

As consumer culture tore through the Emirates at breakneck speed, its souks newly teeming with cheap, mass-produced goods from the global emporium, Sharif sat patiently by, knotting, weaving, folding and stringing. He painstakingly threaded together the props and refuse of daily life—cardboard boxes, plastic cups, Made-in-China metal plates, Made-in-Italy rubber buckets, stainless-steel spoons and foam flip-flops—into labor-intensive but immobilized, defunctionalized and useless creations, making his irony palpable. The towering pile Slippers and Wire (2009) was the multicolored centerpiece of “Experiments and Objects,” overshadowing the more subdued heaps of twisting cardboard garlands punctuating the space.

While “Experiments and Objects” enabled new readings of individual works within the wider span of Sharif’s oeuvre, it also raised questions about the audience in those early days of his artistic production. Determined to engage with younger Emiratis capable of seeing beyond the reigning traditionalism of Emirati art in the early 1980s, Sharif subtly layered provocation in his work, like some kind of sly invitation to the uninitiated. A nascent slant for interactivity, evident in such works as Table (1985–2008), which enticed viewers to bend and feel the pillowy, cotton-ball-lined underbelly of a table, hinted at a cunning strategy of audience involvement.

One of the bitter contradictions that dog Emirati artists is that they often enjoy greater visibility abroad than at home. In this light, “Experiments and Objects,” the first curated show for a local artist organized to international standards, set a powerful, and reassuring, precedent. As the museum infrastructure on Saadiyat Island slowly shores up, the legacy of “Experiments and Objects” lives on—it stands as the most important (and ambitious) exhibition of a single regional artist that the UAE has held to date. Abu Dhabi’s cultural bridges to the world are fortified by its own local artistic credibility, a reputation that Hassan Sharif’s oeuvre, and his retrospective “Experiments and Objects,” did much to establish.