Andisheh Avini
20 Oct - 24 Dec 2016
ANDISHEH AVINI
20 October - 24 December 2016
Avini’s work embodies a nuanced visual autobiography of juxtaposed allusions to his Iranian and American heritage. Mediums associated with traditional Persian craft—which often clash with quotations from Minimalism, Abstract Expressionism, and other Western art movements—form the foundation of his fluid oscillations. These collisions evoke the gradual stylistic evolutions that accompany cross-cultural assimilation, as well as the unpredictable visual conflations of memories.
This installation emphasizes the tensions that fuel Avini’s work, the gaps between past and present, east and west, natural and manmade. A bird’s-eye view of the ancient Persian capital of Persepolis, spans a wall-to-wall carpet. From this monumental window onto the past, new sculptures appear to rise to eye-level, approximating the chronological and aesthetic distances from then to now.
In each sculpture, the natural textures, colors, and energies of raw stones—lapis lazuli, amethyst, quartz—coalesce with exacting marquetry. Several amorphous forms of shaped glass are fully sheathed in these precise patterns of wood inlay. Each object is a product of interplay between harmonized forms of beauty: organic and vernacular, meticulous and mystically lyrical.
Andisheh Avini was born in New York in 1974. Recent solo exhibitions include Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York (2014 and 2015); and galerie frank elbaz, Paris (2014). His work was included in Poule!, Museo Jumex, Mexico City (2012); Six Feet Under – Autopsie unseres Umgang mit Toten, Kunstmuseum Bern (2006-07); and The Gold Standard, MoMA PS1, New York (2006-07, curated by Bob Nickas and Walead Beshty). Avini lives and works in New York.
20 October - 24 December 2016
Avini’s work embodies a nuanced visual autobiography of juxtaposed allusions to his Iranian and American heritage. Mediums associated with traditional Persian craft—which often clash with quotations from Minimalism, Abstract Expressionism, and other Western art movements—form the foundation of his fluid oscillations. These collisions evoke the gradual stylistic evolutions that accompany cross-cultural assimilation, as well as the unpredictable visual conflations of memories.
This installation emphasizes the tensions that fuel Avini’s work, the gaps between past and present, east and west, natural and manmade. A bird’s-eye view of the ancient Persian capital of Persepolis, spans a wall-to-wall carpet. From this monumental window onto the past, new sculptures appear to rise to eye-level, approximating the chronological and aesthetic distances from then to now.
In each sculpture, the natural textures, colors, and energies of raw stones—lapis lazuli, amethyst, quartz—coalesce with exacting marquetry. Several amorphous forms of shaped glass are fully sheathed in these precise patterns of wood inlay. Each object is a product of interplay between harmonized forms of beauty: organic and vernacular, meticulous and mystically lyrical.
Andisheh Avini was born in New York in 1974. Recent solo exhibitions include Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York (2014 and 2015); and galerie frank elbaz, Paris (2014). His work was included in Poule!, Museo Jumex, Mexico City (2012); Six Feet Under – Autopsie unseres Umgang mit Toten, Kunstmuseum Bern (2006-07); and The Gold Standard, MoMA PS1, New York (2006-07, curated by Bob Nickas and Walead Beshty). Avini lives and works in New York.