Shirazeh houshiary artist statement
•
Shirazeh Houshiary came to prominence in the ‘80s as a sculptor, however her practice now encompasses painting, installation, bio, and architectural projects. At the core of her practice lies a fascination with the tension between the process of disintegration and erosion of the universe, and our efforts to try and stabilise it.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Lisson galleri Archive
In 1992 Houshiary began making works on canvas in addition to sculptures, as the artist said in 2000: “I set out to capture my breath”. Bringing together new paintings and sculpture Shirazeh Houshiary in her solo exhibition “Nothing is deeper than the skin” investigates the friction between the conscious and unconscious, control and chance, reflecting on the physical and immaterial qualities that shape art and human life. Skin functions as a membrane, a barrier but also a soft boundary between the human body and the outer world. It is the conduit to the uråldrig sense of touch, but equally it is
•
Shirazeh Houshiary: Nothing is deeper than the skin
In her latest exhibition, Shirazeh Houshiary investigates the friction between the conscious and unconscious, control and chance, reflecting on the physical and immaterial qualities that shape art and human life. Bringing together new paintings and sculpture — including her largest painting to date, a triptych of more than eight metres in width — Nothing is deeper than the skin marks the artist’s first show with Lisson in New York, and her ninth exhibition with the gallery.
Skin functions as a membrane, a barrier but also a soft boundary between the human body and the outer world. It is the conduit to the primeval sense of touch — the first line of defence against friction and conflict – but equally it is exposed to warmth, light and the pleasure of embrace. The works in Nothing is deeper than skin explore the complex relationship between the interior and the exterior, manifesting permeability and flux in their mercurial surf
•
Shirazeh Houshiary makes painting, sculpture, and animation that seek to challenge viewers’ perceptions of time, space, and materiality. Her works often engage opposing ideas and states of being, including transparency and opacity, sound and silence, energy and inertia, and light and darkness. Houshiary’s painting technique involves the successive layering of pigment and line, a laborious process that often takes several months to complete.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Lehmann Maupin Gallery Archive
Works by Shirazeh Houshiary are on show in her solo exhibition “A Thousand Folds”, from a distance, her paintings are reminiscent of a cosmos or the universe, but as the viewer draws closer the meticulousness, detail, and hidden Arabic letters that make up her amorphous forms begin to unfold. Contradiction and paradox are at the core of her work, and the wide universe within her field of inquiry is often met with complexity. The Arabic words embedded in her compositions ar