Shirazeh Houshiary’s optical illusions transfix New York
Iranian artist Shirazeh Houshiary puts perceptions of time, space, and materiality through their paces in ‘A Thousand Folds’ at Lehmann Maupin New York
![Shirazeh Houshiary, Twilight, 2019 (detail), cast glass and stainless steel](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/upoaGDPSUdZBGus982yggA-415-80.jpg)
Shirazeh Houshiary’s ‘A Thousand Folds’ is a game of laws: the laws of nature and the laws of physics that underpin works that are laws unto themselves. It’s all contradiction and paradox: transparency and opacity, sound and silence, physicality and intangibility.
As the show’s title suggests, the London-based Iranian artist’s latest work explores the many folds of the artist’s practice and the thousand dimensions it occupies.
Houshiary’s work has the rare attribute of offering viewer’s two, very distinct experiences. For the first, it may be worth summoning on Rothko’s recipe for viewing his own abstract works: at a distance of 18 inches. At this proximity, Houshiary’s work is the cosmos in our field of vision: a universe of undulations, swirls and hypnotics. The second experience requires a closer inspection, through which viewers can absorb the true magnitude of meticulousness the artist has envisioned, which include a web of hidden Arabic phrases which translate as ‘I am’ and ‘I am not’ – Houshiary’s work creates ample intrigue and few conclusions.
Feel, 2019. Pigment, pencil, and black aquacryl on canvas and aluminum. Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London
With each work, Houshiary attempts to make visual the intangible: an echo, a breath or a memory. The artist describes water as her collaborator. Her distinctive painting technique involves the successive layering of water, pigment, and line drawing, an intense method that often takes several months to complete. Through this process, the artist gives water the autonomy to express itself, movement is organic and free without being mastered by the artist’s hand.
Elsewhere, A powder-coated aluminium piece, The Order of Time, (2019) offers more plot twists. Polychromatic lines curve and weave in rhythmic loops. Elsewhere, her new digital animation A Cup and a Rose muses on 17th-century Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbarán’s still-life painting A Cup of Water and a Rose (1630) and set to a musical score by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt titled Cantus in Memoriam. ‘The cup breaks as the pressure of the water within it intensifies and the rose ages only to eventually pulverise as the cup shatters,’ says Houshiary. ‘This video installation echoes the theme of fragmentation and fission to reveal that space where infinity appears fleeting and vanishing only to revert to a plenitude of water and to appear as though all comes and goes again and again with no end to it.’
The Order of Time, 2019, powder-coated cast aluminium. Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London
Emerging as if rooted in the floor are Houshiary’s dazzling and dynamic sculptures Aura and Twilight (2019), which see Murano glass bricks stacked in a spiralling helix. Each fragment echoes the original shape at its footprint with precision, in this case, a seedpod incrementally rotated to the maximum degree the form will allow before the structure reaches instability – just another example of Houshiary pushing materiality, and viewers’ optical capacity to their physical limits.
Portrait of artist Shirazeh Houshiary. Courtesy Lisson Gallery,
’A Thousand Folds’, Installation view, Lehmann Maupin, New York, until 28 May, 2021. Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London
A Rose and A Cup, 2019, single channel video projection. Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London
’A Thousand Folds’, Installation view, Lehmann Maupin, New York, until 28 May, 2021.Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London
INFORMATION
Shirazeh Houshiary, ‘A Thousand Folds’, until 28 May, 2021, Lehmann Maupin, New York. lehmannmaupin.com
ADDRESS
501 W 24th St
New York, NY 10011
Wallpaper* Newsletter + Free Download
For a free digital copy of August Wallpaper*, celebrating Creative America, sign up today to receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories
Harriet Lloyd-Smith was the Arts Editor of Wallpaper*, responsible for the art pages across digital and print, including profiles, exhibition reviews, and contemporary art collaborations. She started at Wallpaper* in 2017 and has written for leading contemporary art publications, auction houses and arts charities, and lectured on review writing and art journalism. When she’s not writing about art, she’s making her own.
-
‘Hedonistic and avant-garde’: Rabanne’s Julian Dossena on the legacy of the chainmail 1969 bag
Paco Rabanne’s 1969 chainmail handbag encapsulates the late designer’s futuristic, space-age style. Current creative director Julien Dossena tells Wallpaper* about the bag’s particular pleasures
By Jack Moss Published
-
Postcard from Paris: Olympic fever takes over the streets
On the eve of the opening ceremony of Paris 2024, our correspondent shares her views from the streets of the capital about how the event is impacting the urban landscape.
By Minako Norimatsu Published
-
The Mercury Prize nominees for 2024 have been revealed
Charli XCX, The Last Dinner Party and Beth Gibbons are amongst this year's nominees
By Charlotte Gunn Published
-
Toys, fantasy and the US immigration system: inside Julio Torres' debut film, Problemista
Julio Torres writes, directs and stars in Problemista – now on digital release – where the nightmare of US immigration is given a surreal spin
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Alexander May, founder of LA studio Sized, on the joys of creative polymathy
Creative director Alexander May tells us of the multidisciplinary approach that drives his LA studio Sized and its offspring, a 5,000 sq ft event space and an exhibition series
By Hannah Silver Published
-
First Fraenkel Film Festival in San Francisco: what to see
The Fraenkel Film Festival, at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco, sees ten Fraenkel gallery artists choose films that impact their work
By Lauren Cochrane Published
-
Paul B. Preciado on his Orlando film: 'There is no trans question'
Paul B. Preciado interprets Virginia Woolf’s work in 'Orlando, My Political Biography'
By Sam Moore Published
-
50 of America’s top creatives, photographed by Inez & Vinoodh
Photographed exclusively for Wallpaper* by Inez & Vinoodh, we present a portfolio of 50 creatives driving the current discourse on American culture and its dynamic evolution
By Dan Howarth Published
-
Nona Faustine confronts the past in New York
Artist Nona Faustine reframes New York's colonial past in an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Harlem-born artist Tschabalala Self’s colourful ode to the landscape of her childhood
Tschabalala Self’s new show at Finland's Espoo Museum of Modern Art evokes memories of her upbringing, in vibrant multi-dimensional vignettes
By Millen Brown-Ewens Published
-
How the west won: Ivan McClellan is amplifying the intrepid beauty of Black cowboy culture
In his new book, 'Eight Seconds: Black Cowboy Culture', Ivan McClellan draws us into the world of Black rodeo. Wallpaper* meets the photographer ahead of his Juneteenth Rodeo
By Tracy Kawalik Published