The Provincetown Independent

Iran and Wellfleet are worlds apart, yet the painter Kamrooz Aram managed to find memories of his native country in the reflections of Wellfleet’s kettle ponds on two visits to the Outer Cape in the past year. “When the pond is still and the trees are reaching down and also reaching up, I’m reminded of palaces in Iran with reflecting pools,” he explains from his studio in Brooklyn, referencing the architectural wonder Chehel Sotoun in Isfahan, Iran, with its large pool reflecting the building’s 20 columns.

In preparing for his current exhibition at the Arts Club of Chicago, on view until Aug. 13, Aram was initially dismayed by the glossy reflective surface of the gallery floors. “This is a problem,” he recalls thinking, yet particular to his practice is a tendency “to work with the architecture rather than against it.” Eventually, he came to embrace the surface, hanging large paintings, many with a vertical orientation, close to the floor to maximize the opportunity for their reflection.

“The paintings are site specific,” Aram says. Three large vertical paintings were “made for that location” to feel “part architectural and part organic, referencing both the reflections in the ponds and in the palace pools.” In these paintings, he works with the structure of the grid, organizing it to emphasize three columns, fluctuating in height and cut through with stylized leaf shapes. The compositions are sparse, with an active interplay between negative and positive space. Subdued blues and greens dominate, suggesting the Cape landscape.