Kamrooz Aram is a Brooklyn-based artist whose works often challenge a modernist disdain for decoration, ornamentation, and patterning. His current solo exhibition, which is on view at the Green Art Gallery in Dubai through January 8, 2017, features new sculptural installations wherein paintings are explored as mere decoration. Positioned as backdrops to tableaux that might recall museum displays of ancient art, the vibrant, buzzing canvases in these works appear both passive and active. Aram will also have a solo exhibition at the Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens in Deurle, Belgium, from February 5 through April 4, 2017. Here, he discusses his presentational strategies for both shows.
I tend to embrace some of the more taboo subjects in art. For instance, making something that’s emotional, or that has a spiritual presence—these are things that are difficult to talk about because they’re dismissed, by academia mostly, as things that lead to subjectivity and sentimentalism. But not all emotions lead to sentimentality, and not all definitions of spirituality have to do with subjectivity.
The collages that I’m showing at Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens are simply pages from midcentury books that document ancient Persian art. The pages are adhered to linen with minimal pencil lines and monochromatic painting; essentially I’m recontextualizing found images. I’ve realized that so much of my process is formal. When I’m composing a painting or when I’m choosing an image for a collage, it really is an intuitive and formal process.
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