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Art Platform-Los Angeles and Leila Heller Gallery, New York will present a group exhibition of contemporary Middle Eastern artists living in the Diaspora. The presentation will create a dialogue amongst expatriate artists, and the result will be a rich and dynamic exploration of nine artists, all at various stages in their lives and careers. Four of these artists have strong ties to Los Angeles, allowing us the opportunity to also explore the influence of Southern California on their working practices, and the similarities and differences therein. |
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“The pressure of conforming to conventional beauty, which is judged and valued by society, and the search for inner meaning, has provided a foundation and energy for her work.”
Rachel Hovnania, Fun House Dressing Room, 2011. Mixed media installation, Courtesy of Leila Heller Gallery.
Middle Eastern Artists in the Diaspora
Lauren Pollock
Art Platform-Los Angeles and Leila Heller Gallery, New York will present a group exhibition of contemporary Middle Eastern artists living in the Diaspora. The presentation will create a dialogue amongst expatriate artists, and the result will be a rich and dynamic exploration of nine artists, all at various stages in their lives and careers. Four of these artists have strong ties to Los Angeles, allowing us the opportunity to also explore the influence of Southern California on their working practices, and the similarities and differences therein.
By exhibiting these artists together, we seek to challenge misconceptions of art coming from the region and its Diasporas. All of these artists’ work explores the tension between tradition and modernity that is currently at the core of contemporary Iranian art (and life for the expatriate). While each artist borrows stylistic devices, and iconographic sources from traditional Middle Eastern art and literature, each also integrates these aspects into their works in ways that are highly innovative. The result is art that offers a unique expression, individual style, and ultimately an art that can be experienced and appreciated by the larger contemporary art audience internationally.
Highlights from the exhibition include a new, never-before-exhibited, 10-foot long aquaboard painting by Iranian-born artist, Shiva Ahmadi, now living and working in Detroit, Michigan. Ahmadi’s paintings combine beautiful Middle Eastern patterns and designs, with images of violence and conflict. Attractive dark reds invite the viewer in, only to reveal a world of chaos, blood, and war. Such stylistic strategies allow the artist to explore the contradictory idea of beauty and violence existing simultaneously.
Also exhibited will be new mixed media paintings from Ayad Alkadhi’s 2011 series, Story-Teller. Alkadhi was born in Iraq, and has since lived in places as diverse as England, New Zealand, Southern California, and New York. His work employs traditional and stylized forms of Arabic calligraphy as a platform to present current social and political issues in the Middle East. These creations are personal and sometimes incorporate his painted image – a reflection of an artist at the crux of East and West polarities.
Also exhibited will be three photographs from Iranian-born, Los Angeles-based photographer Firooz Zahedi’s Elizabeth Taylor in Iran series, which was recently on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). The stunning photographs reveal an insider look at Zahedi’s journey of traveling with Elizabeth Taylor to Iran in 1976, and include gorgeous images of the late icon posing in odalisque costume and fashionable chadors.
In addition to this group exhibition, Leila Heller Gallery will also feature a solo presentation by American artist, Rachel Lee Hovnanian. Growing up in Texas informed Hovnanian’s abiding concern with our culture’s obsession with physical beauty. The pressure of conforming to conventional beauty, which is judged and valued by society, and the search for inner meaning, has provided a foundation and energy for her work. The city of Los Angeles and Hollywood have been sources of particular influence. For Art Platform – Los Angeles, Hovnanian will present recent paintings, sculpture, photography and installation that explore these themes. Exhibited outside of Leila Heller Gallery’s booth, and in the public space of Art Platform – Los Angeles, will be a site-specific installation of Hovnanian’s 2009 “Fun House Dressing Room”, a life size dressing room in which a distorting mirror magnifies the experience of trying on a bathing suit in public.
***Leila Heller Gallery, New York
Middle Eastern Artists in the Diaspora
Leila Heller Gallery at Art Platform – Los Angeles,
October 1 – 3, 2011
