|
|
|
|
|
|
Artist Exhibitions:
SELECTED COLLECTIVE
EXHIBITIONS
2003 "Artists for Peace,
Justice and Civil Liberties",
www.taparts.org
2003 "Contemporary V",
www.periodgallery.com
2003 "Emotional
Sensibilities", Evolving
Perceptions,
CP ArtSpace,
Washington, DC
2002 "Color the World in
Peace", Project Palette, San
Antonio, TX
2002 "Celebrating
Spirituality", Central Wyoming
College,
Riverton, WY
2002 "visual ...
Further Information
|
|
|
|
Artist Reviews:
REVIEWS:
El Periodico, Barcelona,
Spain; El Pais, Barcelona,
Spain; New Orleans Gambit, New
Orleans, LA; The News, Boca
Raton, FL; Boca Thursday, Boca
Raton, FL; La Vanguardia,
Barcelona, Spain; ABC, Madrid,
Spain; Marte, Barcelona,
Spain;
Sun Sentinel, Fort Lauderdale,
FL; Post Gazette, Pittsburgh,
PA; North Hills News Record,
Pittsburgh, PA.
...
Further Information
|
|
Collections:
Private Collection, Castillo
Family, Spain
Private Collection, Stock
Family, Germany
Private Collection, Guardiola
Family, Spain
Private Collection, Betty
Radice, USA
Private Collection, Ms. Molly
Bonner, United States
Private Collection, Alemi
Family, United States
Private Collection, Zara
Houshmand, United States
Private Collection, Mindy and
Zal Sanjana, United States
Private Collection, Mirsafian
...
Further Information
|
|
Commissions:
Mainline Art Center,
Philadelphia, PA
Ms. L. Larijani, New York, NY
Mr. J. Iranzo, Valencia, Spain
BDM Design, Barcelona, Spain
...
Further Information
|
|
|
Artist Statement for Roshan Houshmand
|
|
|
ROSHAN HOUSHMAND
STATEMENT
The most significant aspect of making art, for me, is the unique fulfillment of psychic, spiritual and emotional needs. I work predominantly in mixed media, intuitively and repetitively layering, cutting, sorting, and folding selected materials; an automatic reflex based on desire, need, and the awareness of one situation's response to another. The intimacy provided by the sense of touch is revealed in the emphasis on texture, as bare hands are my tools of preference. I use fabric, paper, pigment, organic material, photos, texture, smell, found objects and broken bits of stuff, which resonate with a sense of history, nature, time and place. I base my choices on the emotional capacities of the objects. What our culture typically discards due to damage, age, or lack of utilitarian purpose, I find highly evocative. My creative process is a blend of the rituals associated with traditional feminine chores, alchemical explorations, symbolic revelations, geometric constructions and universal mythology, all of which function to integrate fragmentation with unity, the personal with the universal.
Life parallels art. Audacity combined with humility has offered me a life of extremes, in pursuit of meaning, in search of truth. In life as in art, the experiences have been motivated by intuition, guided by divine will, provoked by inquiry into the realms of memory, nature, emotion, and intellect. Just as when I encounter a new relationship, situational or personal, I do not know where the association will go, nor where it originates; life and creativity are cumulative processes. There is an implicit give and take, where material dictates my response, and then again, where I may direct the use of material; ideally these two dichotomies are fused. Suspended consciousness permits the expression of subconscious ideas and feelings. The result is a highly contemporary aesthetic, Installage Paintings.
As an Iranian/American having been raised in the Philippines and Iran; and having spent the majority of my artistic life in Spain and the US, I connect to the diverse patterns of culture in search for a universal truth. My Installage Paintings merge the formal traditions of art with ethereal layers of life's fragments. The geometric principle and concept of concrete form arrive from Cubism, which is found in the foundational layers of each of my pieces. References to the subconscious originate in Surrealism, as a stain or shred evolves into a more concrete image, while the exploration of visual realms, other than the representational and narrative, stem from Expressionism, which is evident in the final product.
Inasmuch as experiences are unique and cannot be repeated, the relationships of form and content, dark and light, the positive and the negative inspire synchronous progression. The method of application and the selection of substance are indispensable components of the whole picture. The exploration of devalued objects as a metaphor for emotions, via an organically cumulative process, crystallizes fragmentation into a visual "truth", based on the formal values of western art. It is the spiritual acting in mysterious ways, which empowers my work with a meaningful sense of soul, and an intelligent sense of coherence. The underlying force behind my existence, life and art, is change.
The concept of multiple layers, hidden and revealed, reflects states of change, in that every event in the visible world is the effect of an "image", as inPlato's notion of idea. Each layer addresses emotion and intellect, fragments of articles corresponding with incidents of life experienced, only to be covered by another experience, ritualistic in process, tactile in sense, and visual in perception.
Displacement has inspired my reconsideration of relationships between art and life, between material and process, form and content. The recurring use of gold leaf, for instance, not only provides a unique luminosity in contrast with the fatty translucence of wax, but also a quality of noble sacredness, juxtaposed against the more pliable life-substance of paraffin. The sensuality of the gardens, with perspective diminished in favor of pattern, with an elegance of calligraphic nature, recalls the influences of oriental art. The visual images presented are more iconic than surreal, highly personal in juxtapositions and associations, imparting a sense of divine purpose through the installation of life's organic fragments.
|
|
send an email
