Kamrooz Aram: An Object, A Gesture, A Décor

Kamrooz Aram will exhibit new and recent paintings, sculptural works, and collages, highlighting the complex position of ornament throughout the history of modern art. Aram’s works challenge conventional art historical hierarchies that have placed fine art and the decorative arts in separate categories of value; mediating patterns lifted from Persian carpets through gestural abstraction, allowing color field painting to become backdrops for ceramics, and employing wall painting with reference to encyclopedic museums, where viewers typical engage the decorative arts.

Aram’s paintings engage a process of building and destroying the image by layering patterns, geometric forms, delicate line, and heavy brushwork, resulting in complex compositions that appear to be in a state of flux.  Aram appropriates curvilinear floral motifs from Persian carpets, exploring the ornamental potential in abstract painting, as well as the potential for expression in supposedly decorative patterns.

The tension between ornament and abstraction—present in Aram‘s canvases—is amplified in his sculptural works, which position ceramic objects on pedestals made of wood, brass, and terrazzo, placed in front of painted linen panels. 

Using exhibition design as a unifying medium, Aram choreographs the flow of the gallery’s physical architecture through a progression of painted walls—a seemingly decorative maneuver and framing device that both articulates individual pieces in the exhibition and unites them under one overarching narrative. The full-gallery exhibition design expands this layering effect and extends the artist’s investigation of how display and context affect meaning.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.