Kamrooz Aram. Palimpsest: Unstable Paintings for Anxious Interiors

Green Art Gallery & Anomie Publishing are pleased to announce the launch of a new publication on the work of Iranian-born Brooklyn-based artist Kamrooz Aram entitled Palimpsest: Unstable Paintings for Anxious Interiors. Published on the occasion of Aram’s solo exhibition at Green Art Gallery, opening 17 March, the fully illustrated 80-page, hardcover publication includes contributions from Eva Díaz, Media Farzin and Murtaza Vali.

This monograph on Iranian-born, Brooklyn-based painter Kamrooz Aram (b.1978) presents the Palimpsest series, in part inspired by the painting-over of graffiti on the streets of New York by the authorities. The ongoing cycle of painting, covering-up and repainting connects with Aram’s long- standing fascination with modernism and the legacies of Abstract painting. Also running through the series is a floral motif that Aram appropriated from a Persian carpet in a Manhattan shop – a motif that submerges and re-emerges within the layers of accumulated and erased marks on his canvases.

For many years, Aram’s work has engaged the complex role that ornament has played in Modern painting. The Palimpsest series expands on this project, raising questions about the possibilities of contemporary abstract painting, exploring whether the process of image-making can become central to the meaning of a painting. As the title Unstable Paintings for Anxious Interiors suggests, the paintings evoke the unstable dynamics of today.

Aram’s interest in ‘painting as palimpsest’ evolved over years of observing and photographing walls n cities across the world, from Brooklyn to Beirut and Istanbul. The worn walls of Beirut still bear the scars of the civil war, while in Brooklyn, years of graffiti and its covering-up reveal the history of New York City. The phenomenon takes on a different meaning in a city such as Istanbul, where much graffiti is the result of public demonstrations related to the Gezi Park protests.

Kamrooz Aram graduated from Columbia University, New York, in 2003. Since then his work has been widely exhibited internationally and featured in publications such as The New York Times, Artforum.com, ArtAsiaPacific, and Bidoun. Aram was a recipient of the Abraaj Group Art Prize 2014.

The publication features texts by Eva Díaz, Professor of Contemporary Art at Pratt Institute in New York; art historian and critic Media Farzin; and an interview with the artist by art historian and critic Murtaza Vali. A photo essay and text have also been contributed by the artist. The monograph, which has been edited by Yasmin Atassi, accompanies an exhibition of Aram’s work at Green Art Gallery, Dubai, from 17 March to 3 May 2014.

Texts by:
Eva Díaz, Media Farzin, Murtaza Vali, Kamrooz Aram

80 pages
Hardback, 318 × 248 mm
Released: 1 May 2014
Edited by Yasmin Atassi
Designed by Joe Gilmore / Qubik
Printed by Die Keure, Bruges
Published by Green Art Gallery, Dubai and Anomie Publishing, UK
Distributed by Casemate LLC and Casemate UK

ISBN: 978-0-9576936-6-1

Contributors

Eva Díaz is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art at Pratt Institute in New York. Her book The Experimenters: Chance and Design at Black Mountain College is due to be released by University of Chicago Press. Her writing has appeared in magazines and journals such as The Art Bulletin, Art Journal, Art in America, Cabinet, Frieze, Grey Room, October, and Tate Etc., and she is a regular contributor to Artforum. She is currently working on a book about the legacy of Buckminster Fuller’s work titled The Fuller Effect: The Critique of Total Design in Postwar Art.

Media Farzin is a New York-based art historian and critic, and a doctoral candidate in Art History at the City University of New York. She received her BFA in Painting from Tehran University, and an MA in Curatorial Studies from Columbia University. Her writings have appeared in Art in America, Art-Agenda, Artforum, Afterimage, Bidoun, and Canvas, among others, and she is author of numerous catalogue essays on contemporary art. She has taught at the Museum of Modern Art, the Sotheby’s Institute of Art, and the City College of New York, and is currently a researcher at the Queens Museum.

Murtaza Vali is a critic, curator, editor, and Visiting Instructor at Pratt Institute, New York. He received an MA in Art History and Archaeology from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts (2004). He is a Contributing Editor at ArtAsiaPacific and an Editorial Correspondent for Ibraaz.org, and his writing has appeared in numerous international publications. He was Guest Curator for the Abraaj Group Art Prize 2013, and is the editor of Manual for Treason, a multilingual publication commissioned by the Sharjah Art Foundation for Sharjah Biennial 10 (2011). He lives and works between Sharjah, UAE, and Brooklyn, USA.

For more information, please contact the gallery at [email protected] or +9714 346 9305 www.gagallery.com