Jonathan Viner
LISTE 2015

Amir Nikravan shows a triangulation of works that come together at the intersection of painting and sculpture. Four mounted works on aluminum hover over two rubber sculptures, each produced via, and contemplating, the limits of physical labor, repetition and exhaustion. Nikravan’s work both performs and depicts the collapse of object into image – tromp l’oeil paintings that appear dimensional and sculptural at a distance, but flatten upon approach. Typically, these paintings trace indexically a surface produced in the manner of painting: marks on a surface, produced using various tools. Two aluminum works, for instance, represent forms produced by dragging a rake through gravel in a painstaking attempt to cover the whole plane in a single sweeping gesture. For the two other paintings in this iteration, however, Nikravan casts mediation aside, using his own body and weight to produce impressions, repeated to exhaustion. Finally, two rubber works, cast from a mold, are reminiscent of an exercise mat where the aforementioned actions may have been performed, but which are images of a repetitive gesture produced by manipulating plaster with a trowel. At each turn, the work eludes expectation. Nikravan’s enigmatic paintings are created using a unique process: the artist begins by sculpting a three-dimensional field, which he then covers and vacuum-seals with fabric. The fabric is then sprayed with layers of paint, and from multiple directions, to emulate the effect of light and shadow pouring across its surface. Nikravan’s process yields a facade that, once peeled from its armature and stretched onto flat aluminum panels, transforms the physicality of matter into a vivid but weightless image. The three sets of two parallel works come together to produce a series that are never quite what they seem, and that toy with the viewer: sculptures produced using painting techniques; paintings that image sculptures no longer in existence; unique works produced from repetition; flat panels that appear dimensional, both above and below the surface; and impressions of a body that seems to defy gravity. The work is grounded, instead, in its insistence as representational objects, not at all the thing they represent, but never entirely discrete either.