Haines Gallery proudly presents The Body Politic, an online viewing room showcasing a suite of new paintings by Iranian-American artist Shiva Ahmadi. In these works, Ahmadi mines the expressive potential of paint while exploring the body’s relationship to trauma and anxiety.
Well-known for exquisitely crafted paintings, sculptures, and digital animations that use formal beauty to seduce viewers into scenes of conflict and chaos, Ahmadi’s recent works are introspective, intimate, and personal. Charged with emotion, these latest paintings illuminate a different kind of stress, one borne from a heightened awareness of the body, its susceptibilities and vulnerabilities, and the self-consciousness that arises from constant scrutiny.
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Shiva Ahmadi
Untitled, 2020
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"Contradiction is something that I grew up with. My paintings are layers of hiding and revealing, beauty and ugliness, abstraction and figuration, gesture and control, transparency and visceral texture."
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Another series of paintings, also realized this year, continue to draw from and subvert the artist traditions of the Middle East, reflecting a tumultuous political landscape rife with corrupt leaders and a populace standing idly by, unwilling to intervene. Yet these new paintings offer loose compositions than Ahmadi's previous works, demonstrating a tendency towards abstraction. As such, they reflect both an increasingly destablized world and an important shift in the artist's practice.
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Shiva Ahmadi
Red Light, 2020
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"When I look at Persian miniature painting from hundreds of years ago, I see the same dynamic that I see in the world today. There is always a king sitting on top of the throne, while his minions worship and follow him. My imagination runs wild."
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Shiva Ahmadi
Burning Car, 2019
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