Artist Kamrooz Aram Discusses New Exhibition at Arts Club of Chicago – RisePEI

When he’s within the midst of planning a brand new exhibition, Brooklyn-based artist Kamrooz Aram goals to reply to the house wherein his artwork might be displayed. That’s very true together with his newest present, “Privateness, An Exhibition,” now on view on the Arts Membership of Chicago.

“The structure is at all times one thing that informs the work—artwork informing structure, structure working with artwork,” he stated on Wednesday evening throughout a chat with Janine Mileaf, the Arts Membership’s govt director and chief curator. “One thing that I choose to not do is to change the of structure bodily in a serious manner. I discover it fairly wasteful, particularly with shorter exhibitions, that you simply construct three or 4 partitions, after which 4 weeks later you tear them down.”

His first concern was the stress inherent within the location of the present: a non-public members membership (with a storied historical past of presenting modernist artwork since 1916) that has a public exhibition house. “There’s one other type of spatial dialog that takes place right here,” he stated.

Subsequent, Aram mulled how the impact of his work may very well be heightened by the Arts Membership’s reflective flooring, made from black terrazzo, in addition to by the Arts Membership’s two everlasting installations: a Mies van der Rohe staircase and Alexander Calder’s 1942 sculpture Crimson Petals, each commissioned by the group and transplanted to the present house in 1997. (The title of one in all Aram’s new work, Iskandari, is a reference to the Persian and Arab variant of Alexander, derived from Alexander the Nice. For Aram, Iskandari is “a tribute to the opposite Alexander the Nice: Alexander Calder.”)

“As I began to assume extra about how I may work with the structure relatively than towards it,” Aram stated, “I began excited about reflecting swimming pools as an idea.”

Included within the exhibition are six new work, a painted privateness display, a collection of six modestly sized collaged work, and two sculptural interventions into the house. The painted components are composed of the principally abstracted geometric kinds—gridded outlines stuffed with oranges, yellows, greens, blues set towards a smeared background—that Aram has change into well-known for over the previous a number of years. These works discover his curiosity in merging components related to ornamental objects and summary portray as a strategy to collapse the boundaries between the 2 and to query the divides that these modes of art-making have lengthy confronted.

Aram views no division between the ornamental arts and summary portray in any respect. He stated he’s thinking about “the distinction between what’s decorative and what’s ornamental: if we are saying maybe that one thing decorative can have content material—whether or not that’s conceptual, symbolic, emotional, or non secular content material—and the ornamental is one thing that’s superfluous in type, one thing that’s actually there to fill the house. And I’ve heard these phrases used the opposite manner round.”

The work, and his observe general, “got down to do is renegotiate the phrases wherein artwork historical past has been written, this very Eurocentric thought of what’s superb artwork and what’s minor artwork.” His ideas on the matter are documented in Privateness, A Pocket book, a ebook that accompanies the present.

One other manner that Aram has responded to the Arts Membership’s assortment is by a privateness display, Spring (1927/28) by Nathalia Goncharova, which was commissioned by the Arts Membership within the ’20s. Aram’s work is titled Privateness Display for Public Structure (2022). Each are constructed from a number of panels which might be hinged collectively; each take inspiration from a purposeful home object.

As artworks, the 2 are meant for show relatively than to function purposeful objects. “I believed it could be attention-grabbing to make a privateness display that doesn’t actually operate as a privateness display, however as a portray,” he stated.

Close by it’s Phantom Architect (2022), positioned in entrance of one of many house’s street-facing home windows. The set up features a small white ceramic depicting a girl’s face atop a thin four-foot-tall column of mahogany, metal, and concrete. Put in nearer to the proper facet of a wall, the sculptural aspect is about behind a white lace curtain, towards a mint inexperienced wall. On the left facet, on both facet of the curtain are two black Le Corbusier chairs owned by the Arts Membership. (The chairs usually reside on the members-only second flooring.)

Positioned on the opposite facet of the Mies staircase is a six-part work, Variations on Wine Bottle, Polychrome on White Floor (2021). Every canvas is comparatively easy: at heart is a sq. that exhibits a vertical band of colour and a collaged picture of a ceramic, with the remainder of the linen uncovered. Whereas the picture of the ceramic maintains comparatively the identical, the colour bar adjustments in every work.

The pages are every drawn from six completely different copies of the identical ebook documenting Iranian ceramics, and every colour represents a colour that may be discovered within the picture. Over the course of years, the paper on which the picture of the ceramic is printed will proceed to fade, whereas the oil paint will stay the identical. “The oil paint is more likely to freeze this second, so it turns into a type of index of these colours,” he stated.

Shade, whether or not in his canvases or painted instantly onto the partitions the place these works hold, is a vital a part of Aram’s observe. However till not too long ago, he hadn’t given a number of thought to his use of it.

“Once I’m requested about colour, I give a solution that sounds nearly like a cop out, which is that it’s intuitive,” he stated. “However I’ve been considering an increasing number of intentionally about colour particularly as I talked concerning the collage piece. As an organizing mechanism within the work, they occur in layers, so the turquoise goes on, the white goes on.”

When it got here to creating the a number of new work which might be on view within the exhibition, Aram started how he normally would with any portray. He primes his canvas by making use of gesso with a palette knife, after which begins to attract a grid with oil crayons to create varied patterns.

“It goes by a means of erasure in order that the crayon strains are erased with solvents and rags, after which rebuilt and erased and rebuilt till I discover a composition that works,” he stated. “After which the portray begins someplace in there. A number of the work are fairly fast, and a few of them are extra hassle—they take a really very long time to resolve.”

He added, “There may be a number of excavation that takes place in my portray.”