YZ Kami's meditative, architecturally inspired ‘Domes’ take over Gagosian Beverly Hills

‘I've always been fascinated by, and really connected to architecture, since I was a young teenager in Iran,’ says YZ Kami when we catch up over Zoom before the opening of his exhibition, ‘The Domes’ at Gagosian Beverly Hills.

‘At the time, I visited different world architectures, from medieval and ancient times. When I came to study in Europe after high school, my fascination continued, and especially with sacred architecture. In churches, temples and mosques, there is this idea of the dome as a metaphor of heaven. This meditative movement is like a repeated mantra that goes through me.’ Kami builds on this idea in his current exhibition, which unites Dome works, dating from 2011 to the present day, with three new paintings from the Messenger series.

Meaning and metaphor unite in the abstract Domes works, which build from symbolic and spiritual colours to create hypnotising concentric circles and patterns, in which the viewer is invited to lose themselves.

‘All the colours refer to different traditions,’ Kami adds. ‘Most of the domes at this exhibition in LA are white domes, with that white light at the centre, which gets absolutely wide, and then gradually there is movement. In different mystical traditions, they talk about the experience of white light, so there is probably a reference to that. The blue has a direct reference to the sky and the heavens, and then the black references traditions of alchemy in Asia, the Near East and Europe –particularly regarding the process of transmutation. They say the process starts with black, which is dark.’ While psychologists link blackness to depression, for alchemists, suggests Kami, ‘nigredo’ is a ‘black liberator’, a necessary first phase of decay and chaos on the path to ultimate transformation.

Rather than being associated with negative impulses, Kami’s black Domes works are contemplative, suffused with a thoughtful positivity. They join the new works from the Messenger series, which captures a single figure caught as if at a crossroads.

‘As well as the meditative movement, you have the externalised aspects […], the human face and the human presence, and the idea of temporality and contemplation,’ says Kami of the show. ‘There is this extraverted and introverted quality, because you have the reference to architecture, which is something outside of our psyche, and then you have the interior, meditative movement of the works, which look like mandalas, these simple forms with these elements that reference the Greeks, or mosaics.’

Gagosian presents ‘The Domes’, an exhibition of paintings by YZ Kami in Beverly Hills, until 8 August 2025, gagosian.com