SATURNS NECKLESS: Laleh Khorramian
Installation view, Saturns Neckless, 2016
The Third Line is very pleased to present Saturns Neckless, Laleh Khorramian’s third solo show at the gallery. Laleh returns with a new body of work featuring dyed and painted fabrics, vestments, and monotype portraits of alien and guardian beings—symbolic of an untiring fascination with that which is otherworldly, the unnameable, and of a timeless inner territory. The exhibition is an homage to these beings—in their multiple forms as druids, seers, knowers, oracles, robots and space forms—and their proximity to alienation, anonymity and totemic divinity.
Included in the exhibition are kimono-shaped hand painted fabric vestments; lengths of unstretched canvas with stenciled prints that on second look reveal distended skeletal structures; shapes nodding towards encased bodies, human or otherworldly. From within these standing structures, a sound piece emanates from special speakers that have been incorporated in collaboration with creators Rob Kalin and Jeffrey W. Jackson. A low frequency penetrates, not heard, yet seen in a fluttering vibration of fabric. A gathering of divine beings converge here, an eddy of whales transmit to a progression of abstracted voices in unknown languages. These sounds—meant to be seen and not heard—propel a polyphonic container, an archeological tapping of existing relics lodged between concurrent memories of past and future calling.
As another collaborative participation, guest artist Mumtazz has produced collaged bodysuits that take inspiration from ancient armature, and are replete with pictures of the gods and goddesses of ancient cultures. Like costumes, which are bodies in themselves, all these pieces work together as artifacts representative of a particular realm. In addition to these are monotypes on paper, which are reminiscent of the heads series from 2006 where Laleh created portraits entirely from imagination, with the act of making taking on a performative role.
As other images feature microbial landscapes and fantasy beings from a parallel universe, delirium and theatricality continue to be a significant part of Laleh’s work through which she explores the human condition, transformation and the sense of unknown mysticism in the face of indistinct divinity. Laleh harnesses the possibilities of chance, accidents and manipulation in her art making, with the final work’s obfuscatory nature allowing room for individual interpretation.
Installation view, Saturns Neckless, 2016
