April 2012
MANAMA
CAPITAL
OF
ARAB
CULTURE
2012
CAPITAL
OF
ARAB
CULTURE
2012
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Seher Shah, Unit Object (bent), 2011
Graphite and gouache on paper, 76 x 56 cm
Kamrooz Aram, Untitled (Storm), 2011
Oil on canvas, 152 x 275 cm
Art Calendar
April
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Selected works from the
38th Annual Fine Arts Exhibition
38th Annual Fine Arts Exhibition
Brute Ornament
Works of
Kamrooz Aram
and Seher Shah
Kamrooz Aram
and Seher Shah
Curated by Murtaza Vali
Green Art Gallery Dubai
until 5 May
Green Art Gallery Dubai
until 5 May
Through the works of Kamrooz Aram and Seher Shah, the exhibition explores \
the conflicted relationship between the decorative tradition of ornament and
Western modernism, revealing the constitutive role that ornament played in the
development of modern art in the West, specifically in the move towards pure
abstraction that was modernism’s endgame.
Both Aram and Shah knowingly deploy their culturally specific subject matter
against a background interest in Western modernism, reflecting a broader
generational curiosity in and nostalgia for its tremendous Utopian aspirations
and the theories, forms and structures it inspired. Over the years, Aram has
developed a personal vocabulary of highly stylized motifs-falcons, star
bursts, patterns from Persian carpets, angelic figures and spiral clouds from
Persian miniatures-that he repeatedly reconfigures into painterly meditations
on mysticism and exoticism that teeter between the sublime and the kitsch.
And in her large graphite drawings Shah, a trained architect, has described a
series of turbulent and fantastic landscapes, courtyards studded with
cenotaphs, columns and monuments and plastered with patches of vegetal
ornament, immersed in maelstroms of vector lines, smoky trails and swirling
arabesques.
In their recent work ornament comes to function less as an overt marker of
cultural difference than the specific terrain on or through which a sophisticated
dialogue between the iconography of traditional Islamic forms and the history,
theory and ideology of modernism unfolds. This recent work also exhibits
hints of ambivalence towards ornament, playing out distinctly in their
respective oeuvres. In Shah’s most recent drawings, while form and space
verge on pure abstraction, the black monoliths that dominate the compositions
are juxtaposed against dispersals of smaller geometric shapes whose
complex patterns fold and unfold, expand and contract, asserting their
presence. And in Aram’s most recent paintings, while pattern and geometry
both struggle to dominate the final image, expressive and gestural painterly
marks challenge their visual integrity. Ornament appears both brutal and
brutalized.
Born in Shiraz, Iran in 1978, Kamrooz Aram received his MFA from Columbia
University in 2003 and his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in
Baltimore in 2001. Solo shows include Negotiations at Perry Rubenstein
Gallery, NY, Generation After Generation, Revolution after Revelation at
LAXART, Los Angeles, CA and Kamrooz Aram: Realms and Reveries at the
Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, Massachusetts.
He has shown in several important groups shows including roundabout
(2010), the Busan Biennale (2006), P.S.1/MoMA’s Greater New York 2005,
and the Prague Biennale I (2003). His work has been featured and reviewed
in the New York Times, Art in America, Artforum.com and Bidoun among
others. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Born in Karachi, Pakistan, in 1975, Seher Shah received her Bachelor of Fine
Arts and Bachelor of Architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design in
1998. Solo shows include Paper to Monument at Nature Morte, New Delhi,
India, Jihad Pop at Bose Pacia, NY and most recently Object Anxiety at
Scaramouche, NY. Her work has appeared in several international exhibitions
ranging from Zeichnungen: Conceptual and concrete drawings at Gisele
Linder, Basel, Generation 1.5; and Eccentric Architecture at the Queens
Museum of Art, 21: Twenty-first Century artists at the Brooklyn Museum,
Empire and its Discontents at Tufts University, the Victoria and Albert
Museum, London, Drawing Space at Green Cardamom, London, Lines of
Control at Green Cardamom and the Third Line, Dubai, New York to Los
Angeles at GBK, Sydney,and Uber Wut/On Rage at the Haus der Kulturen der
Welt, Berlin. She has had reviews in the New York Times, Art Asia Pacific, Art
India, Bidoun, Art Papers, New York Magazine, Time Out New York,
Newsweek and Frieze Magazine amongst others. She lives and works in
Brooklyn, NY.
The exhibition will be accompanied with a comprehensive publication
edited by Murtaza Vali and with contributions by Shumon Basar, Media Farzin
and Alan Gilbert.
the conflicted relationship between the decorative tradition of ornament and
Western modernism, revealing the constitutive role that ornament played in the
development of modern art in the West, specifically in the move towards pure
abstraction that was modernism’s endgame.
Both Aram and Shah knowingly deploy their culturally specific subject matter
against a background interest in Western modernism, reflecting a broader
generational curiosity in and nostalgia for its tremendous Utopian aspirations
and the theories, forms and structures it inspired. Over the years, Aram has
developed a personal vocabulary of highly stylized motifs-falcons, star
bursts, patterns from Persian carpets, angelic figures and spiral clouds from
Persian miniatures-that he repeatedly reconfigures into painterly meditations
on mysticism and exoticism that teeter between the sublime and the kitsch.
And in her large graphite drawings Shah, a trained architect, has described a
series of turbulent and fantastic landscapes, courtyards studded with
cenotaphs, columns and monuments and plastered with patches of vegetal
ornament, immersed in maelstroms of vector lines, smoky trails and swirling
arabesques.
In their recent work ornament comes to function less as an overt marker of
cultural difference than the specific terrain on or through which a sophisticated
dialogue between the iconography of traditional Islamic forms and the history,
theory and ideology of modernism unfolds. This recent work also exhibits
hints of ambivalence towards ornament, playing out distinctly in their
respective oeuvres. In Shah’s most recent drawings, while form and space
verge on pure abstraction, the black monoliths that dominate the compositions
are juxtaposed against dispersals of smaller geometric shapes whose
complex patterns fold and unfold, expand and contract, asserting their
presence. And in Aram’s most recent paintings, while pattern and geometry
both struggle to dominate the final image, expressive and gestural painterly
marks challenge their visual integrity. Ornament appears both brutal and
brutalized.
Born in Shiraz, Iran in 1978, Kamrooz Aram received his MFA from Columbia
University in 2003 and his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in
Baltimore in 2001. Solo shows include Negotiations at Perry Rubenstein
Gallery, NY, Generation After Generation, Revolution after Revelation at
LAXART, Los Angeles, CA and Kamrooz Aram: Realms and Reveries at the
Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, Massachusetts.
He has shown in several important groups shows including roundabout
(2010), the Busan Biennale (2006), P.S.1/MoMA’s Greater New York 2005,
and the Prague Biennale I (2003). His work has been featured and reviewed
in the New York Times, Art in America, Artforum.com and Bidoun among
others. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Born in Karachi, Pakistan, in 1975, Seher Shah received her Bachelor of Fine
Arts and Bachelor of Architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design in
1998. Solo shows include Paper to Monument at Nature Morte, New Delhi,
India, Jihad Pop at Bose Pacia, NY and most recently Object Anxiety at
Scaramouche, NY. Her work has appeared in several international exhibitions
ranging from Zeichnungen: Conceptual and concrete drawings at Gisele
Linder, Basel, Generation 1.5; and Eccentric Architecture at the Queens
Museum of Art, 21: Twenty-first Century artists at the Brooklyn Museum,
Empire and its Discontents at Tufts University, the Victoria and Albert
Museum, London, Drawing Space at Green Cardamom, London, Lines of
Control at Green Cardamom and the Third Line, Dubai, New York to Los
Angeles at GBK, Sydney,and Uber Wut/On Rage at the Haus der Kulturen der
Welt, Berlin. She has had reviews in the New York Times, Art Asia Pacific, Art
India, Bidoun, Art Papers, New York Magazine, Time Out New York,
Newsweek and Frieze Magazine amongst others. She lives and works in
Brooklyn, NY.
The exhibition will be accompanied with a comprehensive publication
edited by Murtaza Vali and with contributions by Shumon Basar, Media Farzin
and Alan Gilbert.
Murtaza Vali is a writer, art historian and curator. He received an M.A. in Art History and Archaeology in 2004 from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. An independent critic since 2005, his reviews, essays, profiles and interviews regularly appear in Artforum.com, ArtReview, Art India, Bidoun, Harper’s Bazaar Arabia Art, Modern Painters and ArtAsiaPacific, where he is contributing editor and was co-editor of their 2007 and 2008 Almanac. He has penned monographic essays on Siah Armajani, Shilpa Gupta, Emily Jacir, Reena Saini Kallat, Laleh Khorramian and Naeem Mohaiemen and recently edited Manual for Treason, a multilingual publication commissioned by Sharjah Biennial X (2011). As winner of the Winter 2010 Lori Ledis Curatorial Fellowship, Vali curated “Accented” at Brooklyn’s BRIC Rotunda Gallery (2010), and received a 2011 Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for Short-Form Writing. He lives between Sharjah, U.A.E. and Brooklyn,NY.