Abstract Art With Deep Meaning: Salem on Memory, Materials, and the Hidden Layer
By Chloe, Curator of Soul Portrait
I see fragments and traces of materials as symbols of memory, change, and renewal.
We tend to ask abstract art the wrong question. We stand in front of it and ask what it is, when the more honest question is what it holds. Some abstract work is decoration, and there is nothing wrong with that. But some of it carries a deep meaning beneath the surface, and learning to feel that is one of the quiet pleasures of living with art.
Salem is one of the artists we work with. His practice is built almost entirely around what lies underneath. In his own words, his work "explores the hidden layers of identity, memory, and human transformation." Through abstraction and mixed media, it also reaches into broader social and cultural issues, the outer world as well as the inner one. He builds with paint, but also with recycled materials: copper, lead, old telephone wires, the small salvaged parts of a life. I wanted to ask him where the deep meaning in abstract art actually comes from.
When you say your work is about hidden layers, what are you reaching for?
What exists beneath the visible. The emotions, the experiences, the traces that shape a person's inner world. A face tells you a little, but underneath there is a whole history that never shows on the surface. That is what interests me. When people go looking for deep meaning in an abstract work, I think they are really looking for that hidden layer, the part of a person or a moment that could never be photographed.
You often build with recycled materials, wire, metal, salvaged parts. Why not just paint?
Because the materials already carry meaning before I touch them. I see fragments and traces of materials as symbols of memory, change, and renewal. A length of old telephone wire has carried thousands of conversations. A worn piece of metal has a past. When I bring those into a work, the piece is not only about what I felt, it is about what those objects have lived through. The meaning is layered into the surface, not painted on top of it.
So where does the meaning come from, you, the material, or the person looking?
All three, and they meet in the work. I work through drawing, expressive abstraction, mixed media, and collage, and I let the materials suggest as much as I decide. What attracts me to a subject in the first place is the story behind it, the invisible journey of a person. I try to leave that story open enough that whoever stands in front of the piece can find their own way in.
At Soul Portrait we commission work from a person's psychological portrait, never from a photograph. How does that fit the way you make?
It fits completely. I am already trying to paint the part of someone a portrait leaves out. Given an inner world instead of a face, I would work the way I always do, in layers, letting memory and material and colour build up until something true rises to the surface. Transformation is the word I keep returning to. A commission like that is a person becoming something you can live with, without ever losing their privacy.
How to find the deep meaning in an abstract work
Salem's advice, and mine, is to stop looking for a subject and start reading the surface. A few ways in:
- Look at what the work is made of. Materials carry their own history before an artist arrives.
- Notice the layers. Deep meaning in abstract art is rarely on top; it is built up underneath.
- Ask what it remembers, not what it depicts. Memory, more than likeness, is often the real subject.
- Give it time. What lies beneath the visible only surfaces slowly.
This is what I care about as a curator. Abstract art with deep meaning is not a puzzle to solve, it is a surface that keeps giving the longer you live with it. It does not show your face to the room. It holds something truer underneath, the way Salem's materials hold the lives they came from.
If this is the kind of art you would want made for you, built from who you are rather than chosen off a wall, you can join the waitlist for an invitation. Add your name here.
Chloe
Curator, Soul Portrait
Selected works
Questions
What gives abstract art deep meaning?
Deep meaning in abstract art usually comes from what lies beneath the surface rather than from a recognisable subject: the memory, emotion, and history built into its layers and materials. It rewards slow looking rather than quick recognition.
Can abstract art hold memory?
Yes. Many artists build meaning through materials and layers that carry their own past. Salem, for example, works with recycled fragments like old wire and metal precisely because they already hold traces of the lives they came from.
How do you read the meaning in an abstract painting?
Look at what it is made of and how it is layered rather than searching for a subject. Ask what the work remembers rather than what it depicts, and give it time; the deeper meaning surfaces slowly.
There is a portrait of you that lives beneath the surface.
Soul Portrait is invitation only. Join the waitlist and we will be in touch.