PATTERNS
Nazgol Ansarinia’s Solo Show at Aun Art Gallery

Fri, 28 May 2010 – Fri, 18 Jun 2010

Click here to see the works on Aun Art Gallery website

The exhibition “Patterns” consists of works from two series Ansarinia has been working on for the past three years; Nonflammable, Non-stick, Non-stain from 2009-2010 and Patterns from 2007-2009. These works are shown together because, according to the artist, there are enough similarities and differences between them that make them complementary to each other.

In a way, both series are based on finding ways to insert information and further meaning onto objects already familiar and perhaps overlooked. The work series Patterns uses the Persian carpet as an everyday object to do so. This collection of drawings inspired by the familiar images and experiences of life in Iran plays with the visual potentials of this world-recognized object/image. While the main subjects are contemporary, the drawings retain the structure of carpets and combine new images with the original patterns. These new patterns are therefore familiar in terms of their form but convey very different meanings to that of their origin.

In Nonflammable, Non-stick, Non-stain, the objects used and the subject matter are again both based on mundanities, but this time the method for their combination is less apparent, or in other words, it is more abstract or coded. The plastic sofreh or table cloth is an unremarkable object found in most Iranian homes but sofreh in its literal sense is also a metaphor for one’s economic status in Iranian culture. Playing with the literal meaning and its actual functionality, sofreh is used as a medium to carry data about the repetitious subject of daily expenses. Visually manipulating the original decorative patterns of the plastic tablecloths, statistical reports of daily expenses are inserted onto these everyday used objects. The method of building a system by relating numerical values to visuals is not unlike the way visuals are used in representing statistics in different fields of science. However the purpose of these visual charts is not to simplify data, but for them to morph into common patterns.