 Shiva Ahmadi: Untitled (Jellybeans), 2005 gouache and watercolor on paper, 32 3/4 x 45 inches Three Positions Shiva Ahmadi, Jacob Feige, Eva Struble Lombard-Freid Projects is pleased to announce the opening of "Three Positions", an exhibition introducing the works of three young American artists with a unique style and passion for painting. Eschewing an overarching subject matter or theme imposing prerequisites for a group show, "Three Positions" does not solicit a direct relation between its participants. True to its title, this show is a presentation of three young artists charting new territories in painting. Shiva Ahmadi constructs delicate and ambiguous watercolor compositions based on scattered personal memories and media filtered events. As an Iranian immigrant born and raised in a country torn apart by war and revolution, Ahmadi makes works that are aggressively political yet subtle and nuanced. Mixing conventional watercolor technique with Persian spices and teas used as paper dyes, she creates disquieting poetic images. Her paintings describe a war zone, where bullets flank the perimeters of a mosque as fences, barbed wire are intertwined with Persian scarves, soldier boots and jelly-beans are scattered "decoration" of a surreal composition. Jacob Feige's canvases are built as personal topographies. In each painting direct representations of nature, geometric patterns, and chance elements simultaneously coexist and contradict one another, blurring clear distinctions between abstraction and representation. Feige begins his work by taking dozens of photographs of the built and natural environments. Then he starts thinking of them in relation to landscape painting and abstract twentieth-century art. His canvases are inspired as much by the works of contemporary German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen as by the Eastern white pine tree which becomes a recurrent presence in Feige's work. Similar encounters are found in "Untitled" (Pine Tree) in which a dying streak on the trunk of a tree reminded him of a Barnett Newman zip line or a mark in a Clyfford Still painting. Feige creates a rhizomatic chart of chance encounters. His canvases and works on paper are precise yet anarchic. They aim to organize chance and to offset structure. Eva Struble's interest in nature and architecture stands at the core of her practice. Her large-scale paintings find a life of their own in the tension between order and disorder, bucolic nature and industrial land. Inspired by such diverse sources as Tokyo based architect team Ushida-Findlay and their concept of "psycho-geometry" as well as Persian miniatures from the 15th and 16th century with their unusual sense of perspective and preoccupation with gardens and patterns, Struble's paintings activate a space of multisensorial perception. Tornado-like brushstrokes, visceral paint and erased surfaces combined with structured configurations create an explosive yet balanced composition. Exhibition: October 21 - December 3, 2005 Gallery hours: Tues-Fri 10 am - 6pm, Sat 11 am - 6 pm Lombard-Freid Projects 531 West 26th Street, 2nd floor USA-New York NY 10001 Telephone +1 212 967-8040 Fax +1 212 967-0669 Email info@lombard-freid.com www.lombard-freid.com |
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