ArtAsiaPacific

Blurring the boundary between traditional non-Western art and Western Modernism, Iranian-American artist Kamrooz Aram mixes representational objects and imagery with abstraction, ornamentation and exhibition design to create profound paintings, collages, drawings and installations, many of which reference traditional Persian visual culture to comment on the institutional display of Islamic art objects. Aram began to consider the gallery space as an architectural whole with such recent exhibitions as Recollections for a Room at Dubai’s Green Art Gallery in 2016–17; Ornament for Indifferent Architecture at the Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens in Deurle, Belgium in 2017; and Ancient Blue Ornament at the Atlanta Contemporary in Atlanta, Georgia in January this year. Featuring painted walls, decorative canvases, graphic collages and sculptural tableaux, these exhibitions embraced the design concept of a Gesamtkunstwerk, or a synthesis of the arts.