Nazafarin Lotfi: Indexical Realness
May 29-July 12015, ClubMonaco, 58 Main St, South Hampton, NY
Nazafarin
Lotfi is an artist with a nuanced approach to abstraction, texture and tone.
Born in Iran, Lotfi is based in Chicago where she completed her MFA in Fine
Arts. Her work has been exhibited in Milan, Chicago, Seoul, Budapest and New
York.
Lofti
began working on this series of small-scale
paintings in 2010 alongside larger works, increasingly attracted to their
intimacy. Part of what makes them so interesting is their focus on texture. “References
of time passing on the surfaces of things always intrigued me,” the artist
explains. “It was a reward to find the layers of dust in the corners of my
bedroom or kitchen, all the places that I didn’t reach. When I rented a studio
the marks left from the previous artists or the rubbed and worn floors were
always fascinating. They are so much about a lived experience that is not
present at the moment and these residues focus your attention to their
thing-ness. I wanted to create that in my paintings.”
Her
reduced color palette to a spectrum of monochrome tones is part of what makes
the results so interesting and surprisingly broad. “I needed to focus and pay
attention to what was in front of me. Then all the possibilities of different
grays opened up and it became about all the colors between black and white.”
When making the work, Lotfi covers her canvases in black and paints over this
white, layering and sanding each layer when dried for weeks. Some pieces
included found elements from her studio – old drawings, cut papers. Here the
image itself reflects the process of addition and removal. As she notes, “I
wanted to spend time with the work and do an activity- the traces of my
presence and touch is left on the surfaces.”
The
presentation of the work was something conceived by the artist. “I like how the
paintings coexist together. They are all part of a larger entity but can also
function on their own.” Sculpture is the serious focus of Lotfi’s work outside
of these paintings – influenced by vessels, ritualistic objects and the work of
artists like Franz West and Jessica Jackson Hutchins. Recent piece include
paper molds of everyday objects with a surface relating to her textured 2D
pieces. Her practice as a whole reflects an intelligent take on the abstract.
“Abstraction came to me as a world of possibility, in some ways liberating and
opening. We usually tend to go for the narrative, that is how we understood the
world at the first place but I think we should move forward and learn to live
without it.” This is work about experience itself.
nazafarinlotfi.com;
text and curation Francesca Gavin roughversion.blogspot.com
For enquiries
contact fgavin@gmail.com
Images from top: All courtesy ofthe artist
Untitled (2012) Mixed media on canvas
