Kamrooz Aram was born in Iran, did his postgraduation in fine arts in the US and is now based in New York. As an artist who has a good understanding of both Eastern and Western art history and approaches to art, he is interested in exploring the potential for ornament and pattern to transcend the decorative.
Aram continues this exploration in his second solo show in Dubai, “Recollections for a Room”, through a series of new paintings. He is also exhibiting a set of installations featuring paintings and sculptures that are designed to explore the significance of exhibition design in shaping our understanding of the artworks and antiquities we view in galleries and museums.
“We often think that artworks exist on their own and without any context. But every room affects the artworks in its own way, and the idea of the white cube being neutral is incorrect. As the title of this show suggests, I have worked with exhibition design to intentionally make the space a context for the works, and I am inviting viewers to engage with objects from the past that we would usually view in museums,” Aram says.
In his paintings for this show, Aram has juxtaposed a floral pattern that has been built by repeating an isolated detail from a Persian carpet, with a geometric pattern commonly associated with European Modernist architecture. The artist’s approach to painting is also typically Modernist. He works the entire canvas at once, building up and scraping down layers of paint in search of a fleeting resolution.
Aram begins the paintings with a pencil grid, mapping out the floral forms with oil crayons and then wiping away and redrawing them, leaving traces of the previous layers visible.
“I have always started my paintings with a grid, which gradually disappears. But in these paintings I wanted the grid to remain visible as a tribute to Agnes Martin, an artist I admire. Like him, I am interested in creating an emotional or spiritual feel in the paintings, which is something that has often been deemed a taboo in art criticism. I have tried to achieve a depth and presence beyond the so-called decorative, to renegotiate a history of Modern Art that has banished ornament as meaningless excess, a waste of labour, or an architectural crime,” Aram says.
The artist has also painted the walls on which his paintings are hung with complementing hues, subtly influencing the impact of the works on the viewer. He takes this concept further in his installations, which feature soapstone, alabaster, bronze and iron sculptures, or objects such as a hand-painted ceramic vase placed on wood and brass pedestals, or Terrazo and brass panels with a simple abstract painting on linen as a backdrop.
The objects look like ancient artefacts one would see in a museum, and are displayed in the way such objects are displayed in museums. But there is no text or label to offer any information about the cultural significance, authenticity, authorship or history of the objects. The intriguing titles of the installations, such as “A Monument for Living in Defeat”, “Ephesian Fog” and “Reluctant Descent”, add to the mystery.
By using complementary forms and colours, the artist has created a subtle relationship between the objects, the pedestals, the flooring, the paintings and the space around them in each installation, highlighting the fact that they can only be viewed in relation to one another, and depend on each other for context.
“I am thinking about how a work impacts the space in which it exists and how the space in which it exists impacts the work. Each of these elements was made with the others in mind as part of the installation. I want to show that the context is as important as the object itself, and influences our understanding of it. The context can be meaningful in ways that may or may not be conceptual, but it might have an unknowable impact such as the feeling you get when you go to a museum and see an artefact that is thousands of years old. So, I am also questioning why we cannot look at works without thinking about how old they are or where they come from, and assigning value to them based on that,” Aram says.
Jyoti Kalsi is an arts-enthusiast based in Dubai.
“Recollections for a Room” will run at the Green Art Gallery, Alserkal Avenue, Al Quoz, until January 15.
