O’ Gallery Exhibition Review
O’ Gallery Exhibition Review By Ghanoon Daily
Art screams the Nature’s Annoyance
On July 2015, Amin Shojaie showcased his works at the “O’ gallery” with the title of “Collision Between the Human and the Nature”. The exhibition was held in a way that the absence of the titles did not engage the visitors’ mind since the works were directly illustrating the artist’s concerns.
In this collection –which is Amin’s first solo exhibition– the works are presented in different media. Following a realistic point of view, He has created abstract conceptual works with an evident sense of environmental concerns. He describes his motivation to set up this exhibition as something that came into the being after watching images during countryside areas travels. The landscape of suburban areas that are filled with nylon bags stuck in dried desert thorns and the imagery of unutilized lands in which plastic dumps like nylon bags and rubber wheels are set to fire.
The works are non-judgemental and does not pass an order for the viewer but it is the same viewer who is forced to think after observing certain signs and symbols. For instance, this collision is more tangible in his works of installation. When you approach the works, you will see the reflection of your own image in a mirror that is also reflecting the ceiling’s white color. The image of your face is put next to the burnt and melted plastic bags and car tires that are left in the nature.
A person would face his or her own negative products, sometimes his or her image consolidates with the reflection of them. It is barely possible to encounter such close contact and not to think of your own impact on such phenomenon that is widely seen in the suburban areas of big cities. This collision also focuses on the role of each society’s member in the creation of such phenomena. On the role of each individual influence, he adds: “5 trillions of cigarettes are sold yearly and one third of them fell on the ground. The arsenic that is found in cigar filters causes one billion cubic meter of water to be contaminated. This mass is the demanding water of 14 million persons in the world. Each cigar filter contaminates 500 liters of water and one cubic meter of snow.” Both in the gallery of installations and other works some wires and ropes are twisted and tied to each other. Artist’s protracted thoughts that pass through each other and sometimes are knotted together, suggest the idea of synthesis between human beings and the nature with a cold and rough language; a connection that is not smooth and flowing, and is full of knots and failures; like a spider’s web in an ambush for a prey, he creates some obstacles in the passageway of the gallery. A connection in which human annihilates the nature quickly and in this course himself gets destroyed.
In the second floor of the gallery, huge oblong boxes are kept that are similar to small wooden coffins. As he describes : “These are representational symbols for formation of a system, it’s natural material is wood but the the production technique is mechanical and the conjunctions are done with nails, resin and glue.” The boxes are painted with rough and harsh colors and are ornamented with both natural and industrial symbols like beehives, rebars and interweaved wires (as a reminder of spinal cords or a web of interweaved wires), tree scruffs, horseshoes (as symbols of animal taming) or heated styrofoam (alike inner body organs). These elements create macabre shapes together that are also close to the artist’s mentality. An atmosphere that tries to point out to the dark sense of destructive impacts of industrial activities by using those elements. Colors are sometimes besprent on the surfaces and some other times are merged into each other and paintings that are like shaggy lines with contrasting colors are illustrated on them. These lines express the artist’s tangled mind in the case of interaction with the nature. In the other part of the exhibition, mixed media canvases are shown that seem to be an abstract painting from a long distance; for instance, image of a serene field or a sea during the sunrise. But on the close encounter one would realise more material than only colors; components like wood, belt, handles, fabrics and pins that the scenery is created by using them. These elements brings the eye to an image of nature that is very familiar to us.
In these canvases, we witness loads of human and industrial waste that are almost filling up our living environment. As if the artist is illustrating the inevitable future of the mankind in an unhealthy and destructive way as it says in the statement: “gradual annihilation and decline of human civilizations”. Amin Shojaie describes it as : “Creation of a new world embraces the destruction of a world of ruins.”
The nature recovers itself, but it happens slowly; and this is not the blunt passage of time that we can easily pass through it. He adds these words about the exploitation : “We perpetually hear on the news about certain acres of forests in north-Iran being exploited, but what do these exploitation actually mean? This exactly signifies the cutting down of trees.” It seems like we use the words with less negative connotations to ignore the main action we venture on. The artist is not satisfied with this process and creates his works in a way that the observer touches his or her interaction with the nature, without him uttering a single pleasing word.
A criticism on Ogallery exhibition
Ghanoon daily news paper August 26th
Author : Afsaneh Javadpour