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Since Rashid Al Khalifa was a child, he was deeply interested in art and archaeology and throughout his artistic practice, which began at a very young age, he aimed to express the principles of life, through the contrasts that he observed in his immediate surroundings, as well as through the colours and light of his home country.

In much of Rashid’s work, one may recognize the ‘rules of repetition’, one of the most important aesthetic principles of Islamic art. The frequency and repetition of a form, however complex it may be, creates the illusion of infinity, from which harmony arises. Rashid’s work integrates a specific color palette and hues that are characteristic to the Bahraini landscape with the rhythmic nature of such repetition, thus alluding to his desire to express order and symmetry and to also capture the essence of existence. The circle in its simplest form, is a self-contained line without a beginning or an end. Universally, it is viewed as a symbol of wholeness and unity, where all opposing aspects of life can coexist. Furthermore, it represents the cyclical nature of life. It was the soothing nature of the circle and Rashid Al Khalifa’s growing inclination to depict flawlessness and precision which impelled him to delve further into Minimalism from 2015 onwards. In doing so, he resisted employing painterly features, gestural marks or any shapes that he considered excessive or superfluous. Instead, he focused on simplifying his work and welcomed the challenge to create forms that were stripped of detail, whereby the whole image would elicit a sense of peace and satisfaction.

In his move towards Minimalism, the reflective surface that dominated his work between 2010-2014, was no longer an option since it was always at the mercy of its surroundings. Rashid began to focus on employing a medium that would absorb rather than reflect light and still genuinely communicate the richness of the colours, so that neither one nor the other overpowered the work’s overall energy field. He also realized that he would have to revisit his use of aluminium, a material he had previously worked with.

Since 2010, Rashid employed aluminium, a material that requires a great deal of energy to produce. In fact, Bahrain is one of the world’s leading countries in the production of aluminium. Robust and strong, thias material provided Rashid with a perfectly unscathed surface on which to apply his matt enamel paints. What resulted were smooth and pristine forms; their dynamism and quiet authority, owing to their modest simplicity. By excluding the pictorial and fictive aspect of his narrative in favour of literal and sculptural concerns, Rashid became a creator of objects, searching for that balance between positive (or non-white space) and the use of negative spaces in his aesthetic composition. Hence, his concretized, distilled, and philosophically charged geometries. The artist began to produce specific and identifiable structures inhabiting a space not easily classifiable as either painting or sculpture, thereby avoiding easy associations with traditional conventions.

Lime Green Folds II, Blue Folds II and Altered States II, see the onset of patterning through the repetition of the circular form over the surface. Here, four circles are presented on his convex facade each folded inward or outwards. This uncomplicated interaction, playful choice of colour and apparent fragility of the folds, alludes to the transient nature of Bahrain’s manmade environment. Around this time the artist began considering ways in which he could express the physicality of modern architecture, with its ever-changing designs, in synchronized relationship to the natural landscape. Rather than improving design by further removing elements, he became interested in considerations for ‘essences’ like material, space, place, and the human condition.

Like Minimalist architects contemplating the physical qualities of the building and being drawn to the ‘spiritual’ dimension and the invisible details that reveal abstract qualities but also the visible realities of natural light, sky, earth, sea and air, in open dialogue with the surrounding environment. Rashid strips away distractions and uses only one colour in this instance to convey meaning which then becomes self-evident.

In Diffraction II, the curvature of the circle is only partially excised from the white convex layer of aluminium and folded inwards at the centre. The negative space seen within the carved slits,looks like two crescent moons mirroring one another. Also resembling gently folded paper, the aperture seems to occur effortlessly, despite the impervious reality of the material used. Again,Rashid applies the ‘less is more’ principle to convey sentiments and ideas by organizing basic elements such as lines and planes. In this case, he may have been inspired by the English mathematician and astronomer, George Biddell Airy (1801 – 1892) who described the best focused spot of light a circular aperture can make. This insight into the diffraction pattern from a uniformly illuminated, circular aperture with a bright central focus and concentric rings, is important to physics, optics, and astronomy alike.

Pink Circle II, calls to mind the Rashid’s earlier paintings, with its dusty hue of rose, a colour that filters throughout Bahrain’s sky at dawn. The symmetry of the circle, used throughout much of Rashid’s oeuvre from 2010 onwards, encapsulates the femininity of his earlier figurative works as well as the romance and tranquility of his early landscapes.

Untitled Grey III, accentuates the elimination of detail, concentrating on a single, neutral colour that embodies and reconciles polarity; a perfect blend of black and white. It was this austerity that enabled Rashid to investigate, to an even greater extent, the manner in which the subtle relationship between two layers of aluminium could significantly affect the resulting work. These experiments were interdependent of any surrounding light reflecting onto and from the work itself.

Devoid of any colourful, visual distraction, the purity and simplicity of the circular form casts a subtle shadow, depending on the transiting light across its surface and the angle at which it is perceived. In reality, we are reminded that when our world is liberated from excessive detail and movement, our vision and decision making is cleared, our awareness broadened, and our connection to our own ‘life source’ deepens.

Cirular Reflection II, recalls Rashid’s ongoing desire to experiment with a variety of surfaces,attributed to his continuing contemplation on his role as an artist and his growing responsibilities in society. Encouraged to test other materials that could also interact with and be affected by the immediate environment, Rashid often employs a mirrored surface which offers a means of reflection, both physically and metaphorically. As he manipulates the surface, through varying layers, he is in fact impressing his individuality upon a pristine and dynamic substrate, which in turn replicates the impermanence of the setting in which it is placed. Given that its principle power source is light, the place and time in which such works are seen and whoever stands in their presence influences the nature of the work itself.