2014 Catalogue Archive

Andisheh Avini uses a personal relationship with Iranian heritage to explore broader and more collective notions of memory and imagery. Avini’s interests lie in complicating and obstructing the language of cultural production, both visually and conceptually. Here, he uses a “readymade” material, the carpet, as a support for his painted composition. Using inks of rich blues and reds, Avini extracts both the mundane and physical warmth of the non-art material to further disrupt traditional ideas of painting. This figure-ground composition plays with modernist notions of depth, surface, and picture plane in a clever and sensuous manner. Ultimately, Avini’s work highlights the complexities of how culture and aesthetics enter into the canonical art historical discussion regarding tensions between high art, craft, and design. Avini has shown consistently in solo and group exhibitions since 2002, including locations in New York, Berlin, Los Angeles, Basel, Madrid, and Paris. He currently lives and works in New York.