“Make It Believe,” @ The Third Line Gallery, Dubai
Paintings by Amir H. Fallah
16 April – 7 May, 2009
The Third Line is proud to present the second solo exhibition of paintings by Amir H. Fallah, humorously investigating the precarious and complicated nature of memory and monument.
In Amir H. Fallah’s latest body of work, he continues his prior explorations into boyhood memory, the intensity of relationships, both past and present, and the thin line between the real and the imagined.
In Fallah’s ongoing series, “I Put You on a Pedestal,” prickly cacti (used as symbolic stand-ins for people), alluring yet dangerous, contained and cared for in colorful pots, populate the works, resting on precariously constructed towers. Souvenirs, knick-knacks, figures and trinkets gather in the makeshift displays– not unlike the beloved bric-a-brac of a grandmother’s curio cabinet—physical placeholders for transient memories, times, places. Set within dreamlike gradient-laden voids—large washes of intense colors that elude notions of time and place–Fallah’s acid sunsets (or sunrises) defy specificity, at once prehistoric, otherworldly, and futuristic.
Each painting loosely weaves narrative threads together, culled from Fallah’s personal experiences, art history, pop culture or invented recollections. In “The Saddest, Saddest, Saddest Love Song,” Fallah facetiously combines cult musicians Morrissey, Elliot Smith, Daniel Johnston, Johnny Cash and Robert Smith into a hilariously unwitting multi-duet, collapsing musicians young and old, alive and deceased across genres and eras. The multi-tiered fort levels, like vignettes within a memoir, function like chapters in the painting’s overarching story.
Within this latest body of work, Fallah’s idiosyncratic sense of humor is now fore grounded: there is a joyous sense of reverie and ironic celebration at life’s occasionally nonsensical & erratic nature. In “The Ultimate Mom Painting,” Fallah constructs a classic still life of flowers. Traditionally symbols of the fleeting nature of life, Fallah has turned the memento mori into a loving jab at his mother’s expectations of him as an individual in society, and as an artist.
Figurative collage elements are also introduced. As textures and imagery–both photographic and painted–collide, the boundaries between authenticity and artifice, original and copy, are further complicated.
Fallah’s works can be seen as playfully constructed metaphors for the ways in which we precariously assemble meaning and memory, monument and truth—which, like his forts, are always teetering on the verge of glory, or collapse.
About Amir H. Fallah
Amir H. Fallah’s works range from painting, drawing and sculpture, evoking a fresh, brightly colored aesthetic that addresses a nexus of idiosyncratic topics. In addition to creating fine art, Fallah’s creative intuition manifests itself in a broad cross-section of projects. He is also the publisher of Beautiful/Decay, an internationally distributed contemporary arts magazine and Creative Director of Something in The Universe, a design agency/creative think tank.
Amir received his B.F.A. from The Maryland Institute College of Art and his M.F.A from UCLA in 2005. Exhibits include shows at 4-F, M.Y. Art Prospects, Laband Gallery, cherrydelosreyes, Overtones, The Third Line, Weatherspoon Art Museum, The Sharjah Biennial, Nathan Larramendy Gallery, Mary Goldman, Rhys gallery, and at LA Louver.
He has given talks at a range of respected institutions, including Columbia College, USC, UCLA, Cleveland Institute of Art, California State University Northridge, USC and Maryland Institute College of Art. He has also participated in a number of creative panels and conferences, including “UNBOUND: How L.A.’s Art Magazines are Changing the Face of Popular Culture” and the Congreso Creactivo design conference in Mexico.
Fallah lives and works in California, USA.
About The Third Line
The Third Line is an art gallery that represents contemporary Middle Eastern artists locally, regionally and internationally, with gallery spaces in Dubai and Doha. The gallery organises non-profit, alternative programs including Kutub, a bi-lingual Arab literature appreciation circle and a Documentary & Arab Feature Film Series; and, along with 4 other creative groups The Third Line co-organizes Pecha Kucha Dubai, an international multimedia forum for creatives and designers.
The Third Line’s publishing division, Works on Paper, aims to publish three to four books of associated artists from the region annually. They include Presence by Emirati photographer Lamya Gargash (2008), In Absentia by Palestinian-Kuwaiti Tarek Al-Ghoussein (2009) and forthcoming monographs of Egyptian artist Huda Lutfi and Iranian artist Farhad Moshiri.
In March 2009, The Third Line shall launched The Doha Series, which will see four selected artists travel to Doha, Qatar and create a unique body of work in response to their experience of the city.
Represented artists include: Abbas Akhavan, Ala Ebtekar, Amir H Fallah, Arwa Abouon, Ebtisam Abdul Aziz, Farhad Moshiri, Fouad Elkoury, Golnaz Fathi, Hassan Hajjaj, Hayv Kahraman, Huda Lutfi, Lamya Gargash, Laleh Khorramian, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Neda Hadizadeh, Pouran Jinchi, Rana Begum, Shezad Dawood, Shirin Aliabadi, Susan Hefuna, Tarek Al-Ghoussein and Youssef Nabil.
Issue T: The Hyperspectrum Press Release
August 23–(Los Angeles, CA) Beautiful/Decay is excited to announce the release of our latest issue, “The Hyperspectrum.” For Issue T: The Hyperspectrum, Beautiful/Decay turns on and tunes in to a psychedelic mix of fine art, design and music that is inspired by altered awareness, saturated palettes and mystical states. Issue T presents an eclectic mix of features from some of today’s best emerging and established artists. Included are the holographic and perceptually ambiguous works of David Shaw, the colorfully vicious collage monsters of Pepe Mar, bold designs from Barcelona based Alex Trochut and the hallucinatory illustrations of Jacob Magraw-Mickelson. Also featured are the ethereal and irreverent “digital paintings” of artist Jeremy Blake, whom the art world sadly lost shortly before the release of this issue.
In keeping with the creative content, Issue T features an original, psychedelic influence through its design and lay out. Each spread features custom, hyper-colored aspects that compliment and highlight the work of each artist featured. Issue T also prominently features the use of a typeface called “Souvenir,” popularized in 1967, the legendary Summer of Love.
On the Music front, Beautiful/Decay interviews a mix of talents, including the eclectic jazz/funk guru Bill Laswell, the interplanetary sounds of Acid Mothers Temple, and British experimental songwriter Robert Wyatt, who has collaborated with the likes of Bjork, Brian Eno and Ryuichi Sakamoto.
We are also excited to present an in-depth article close to our hearts about the history of graffiti, street art and underground “zines.”
Issue U: Institutionalized Press Release
Since the birth of the first public museums roughly three hundred years ago, art as we know it has been profoundly affected by the poetics and policies of the institutions that house, display, and collect works of art. For Issue U, we explore how art behaves within an “Institutionalized” framework. We will be interviewing figureheads around the world and exploring established art institutions, non-commercial galleries, alternative spaces and museums, to gain a deeper understanding of what happens when art and institution conflate, and how these seemingly oppositional forces react and interact.
We are proud to present a series of interviews with some of the world’s leading curators and museum directors discussing what’s hot on the art scene today. Featured interviews include: Matthew Higgs from New York’s White Columns, an alternative non-profit exhibition space devoted primarily to emerging artists unaffiliated with galleries; Kathy Kimball from San Jose’s Institute of Contemporary Art, a non profit visual arts space featuring artists from around the Bay Area; Swiss curator and art critic Hans Ulrich Obrist, Director of International Projects at London’s Serpentine Gallery; Senior Curator Mami Katoaka from Tokyo’s Mori Museum; and Susanne Pfeffer from one of Berlin’s foremost contemporary art institutions, KW Institute for Contemporary Art. We will also interview Los Angeles’ own James Elaine who curates the Hammer Projects series at the Armand Hammer Museum.
As usual, we will also feature a number of show reviews, including Matthew Monahan’s enigmatic sculptures at the MOCA, Tom Sach’s effusive installations and constructions at the Rose Art Museum, Mark Bradford’s sensuous collage abstractions at the Whitney, John Kessler’s drawing based works that confront the collusion of advertising, propaganda, surveillance and technology and the MCA’s current show, “Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967” that examines the relationship between rock and roll and contemporary visual art.
Also featured is an article on Skowhegan’s seminal artists residency, interviews with hip hop group Baby Elephant and Fugazi’s legendary front man, Ian Mackaye, and a feature on graffiti artist Set.
Issue V Press Release
February 25, 2008–(LosAngeles, CA). Throughout the ages, artists have created and appropriated “grotesque” imagery to express and call into question cultural anxieties, push the borders of established boundaries and defy reigning aesthetic conventions. Whether imagined in Hieronymus Bosch’s 15th century hallucinations of heaven and hell in “The Garden of Earthly Delights” or unmasked in Tracy Emin’s brutally honest and intimate sculpture “My Bed,” conceptions of non-classical beauty—at once both seductive and transgressive—have long been envisioned.
For Issue V, we examine the current state of the grotesque within contemporary art and music, whether it is manifested through content, imagery, material, or practice. Like carnival mirrors, these works can reflect unsettling visages, though a strange attraction can still be found in their unconventional appearances. Ultimately, the grotesque can be seen as the quintessential cultural catalyst, igniting the sparks of consideration, debate, and intrigue, and thereby propelling society forward.
We are proud to include interviews with artists who embody the bipolar and challenging aesthetics of repulsion and attraction, including Folkert De Jong’s viscerally macabre sculptures, Trenton Doyle Hancock’s hallucinatory imaginative drawings, Pearl C. Hsiung’s pseudo new age psychedelic paintings and Tanya Batura’s perturbing death-mask sculptures.
As usual, we will also feature a number of show reviews, including Mark Dean Vecas’s comic book biomorphic reinterpretations, Monica Majoli’s psychosexual watercolors, Scott Hug’s pop-infused media-saturated recontextualizations and Dawn Kasper’s fabricated self-portrait death scenes.
Beautiful/Decay Website Relaunch Press Release
BEAUTIFUL/DECAY RE-LAUNCHES WEBSITE WITH NEW LOOK AND GREATER INTERACTIVITY
August, 2008–(Los Angeles, CA) In their quest to constantly improve upon and provide dynamic creative resources, Beautiful/Decay has once again revitalized and re-designed their website (www.beautifuldecay.com). The site has garnered attention as being an informative art and design web portal with a fresh take. The new site is still an invaluable resource for anyone who wants to stay updated on all things creative, yet now showcases more user-friendly features.
The first noticeable change to visitors is the revamped design scheme. The design still takes a playful, slick hyper-color approach, but in reverse: text is now larger, and black on white, making for easier reading. Rather than a hyper spectrum of gradients and rainbow color, the focus limits its palette to black, white and shades of neon green.
Visitors will now also have even greater interactivity with the site. Users can still post their own events and images in our Event Section, and projects, portfolios or other links in the Public Feed. However, the Beautiful/Decay Feed and Anthology now allow users to post comments, effectively creating a forum for the exchange of ideas and linking creative responses.
The site still provides the same great exclusive interviews, profiles, updates and gallery guide. Our reorganized and carefully curated link section also still offers additional links to some of the finest art, design, fashion and illustration sites from around the web.
Beautiful/Decay magazine is the definitive art and design publication showcasing emerging and established contemporary artists. The magazine acts as a go-to, first exposure sourcebook that reveals today’s most influential and innovative talents from the creative world. B/D strives to uphold the integrity of the magazine through distinctive covers, attention to detail and design, and provocative creative content. The constantly updated Beautiful/Decay online allows users to get exclusive up-to-the-minute content any time.
For more on Beautiful/Decay: www.beautifuldecay.com
To visit the online shop: www.indiemerchstore.com/beautifuldecay
Weekend Warrior Art Opening Press Release
Beautiful/Decay magazine and Nathan Larramendy gallery are pleased to announce “Weekend Warrior.” The artists selected for this exhibition represent a diverse cross-section of media and creative expressions—with an overarching theme of innovative aesthetics. The gallery is located in Ojai, California, a city most commonly known as a weekend getaway for the glamorous jetset. Beautiful/Decay and Nathan Larramendy continue with this theme, and shift the paradigm to invite Los Angeles’ artists and creative community for a retreat in one of the most unique locations that southern California has to offer. An afternoon reception will be hosted on July 12th from 3-6 pm; food, drinks and music will be provided.
Tony de los Reyes incorporates literary thematics from Herman Melville’s classic novel, Moby-Dick, as metaphors for the darkly obsessive, violent tendencies of the United States and its creation of allegories and histories to justify and heroicize self-destructive impulses.
Ruby Osorio also deconstructs disguised mythologies; in particular, she examines representations of femininity and the odalisque within the history of art via delicate watercolors on paper. Robbie Conal presents searing political critique more overtly, in the tradition of social satirists such as Honore Daumier, by lampooning figures from popular culture.
Steven Shein imagines maximalist geometric saturated synthetic “full void, empty volume” pieces, while Vanessa Chow’s visual feasts blend meditative hand crafted constructions with vibrant idiosyncratic imagery.
Allison Miller creates self-referential abstract paintings that feature whimsical organic hand-drawn geometric line work; their ruler-less rendered imperfections lending charm and sincerity. In contrast, Robert Olsen creates representational works that isolate mundane images and occurrences to elevate and abstract their context, often referencing the solemnity of modernist masterworks. Olsen’s lusciously painted smooth surfaces are subtly humorous in their rarified, straight-face treatment of every day objects; transforming a graffiti ridden bus stop into a Dan Flaven-esque light box, or a 76 ball into a canonical Ed Ruscha style pop painting.
Simmons and Burke turn their gaze to the rapidly expanding digital landscape, culling images from internet search engines to create dizzying, horror vacui creations that call to mind the monstrous multiplicity of Hieronymous Bosch.
—————————————————————————————————-
Ojai, which takes its name from the Chumash Indian word A’hwai, meaning “nest” or “moon,” is a special place with a long history of reverence and appreciation for agriculture, the arts, education and the human spirit. The city is nestled within the Ojai Valley, a tiny sun-drenched, east-to-west laying valley 10 miles long and three miles wide that closely resembles the look and climate of either Tuscany or the south of France.
Beautiful/Decay encourages weekend warriors to stay the night and indulge in the wide variety of restaurants and attractions, ranging from horseback riding, mountain biking, hiking and regional arts based activities. In order to enhance your weekend stay, we have compiled a helpful list of resources to plan your trip to Ojai.