Art Jameel
Brute Ornament
Brute Ornament, a two-person exhibition featuring the works of New York-based artists Kamrooz Aram and Seher Shah, was accompanied with this comprehensive publication edited by Murtaza Vali and with contributions by Shumon Basar, Media Farzin and Alan Gilbert.
In their recent work, ornament comes to function less as an overt marker of cultural difference than the specific terrain on or through which a sophisticated dialogue between the iconography of traditional Islamic forms and the history, theory and ideology of modernism unfolds. This recent work also exhibits hints of ambivalence towards ornament, playing out distinctly in their respective oeuvres. In Shah’s most recent drawings, while form and space verge on pure abstraction, the black monoliths that dominate the compositions are juxtaposed against dispersals of smaller geometric shapes whose complex patterns fold and unfold, expand and contract, asserting their presence. And in Aram’s most recent paintings, while pattern and geometry both struggle to dominate the final image, expressive and gestural painterly marks challenge their visual integrity. Ornament appears both brutal and brutalised.
Black and white and colour illustrations
Softcover
64 pages
ISBN: 9789948164272
Publisher: Green Art Gallery
Published in 2012
Published in the United Arab Emirates
Designed by Leena Saoub
This item is eligible for international shipping.