The Particular Poetics of Things
@ Goldfinch
319 N Albany Ave, Chicago, IL 60612
Opening Sunday, November 13th, from 3PM - 5PM
On view through Saturday, December 17th
GOLDFINCH is pleased to present The Particular Poetics of Things, a group exhibition of works by four artists whose site-responsive practices balance an architectural command of space, form, and material with an abiding interest in surface description and the passage of time. Utilizing highly personal and intuitive approaches to a post-Minimalist vocabulary, each of these artists transforms mundane materials into strikingly poetic visual forms.
Rana Siegel’s “ice works” compactly illustrate the interest in temporality, transience and fragility shared by all four artists. Consisting of elegantly looped strips of ribbon or fabric held in place by blocks of ice, Siegel’s small-scale sculptures will slowly dissolve and transform over the course of the gallery’s initial open hours. After the ice melts, the fabric strips will remain, their placement in space no longer supported by a frozen armature but instead determined solely by the forces of gravity and dissolving liquid.
Alchemical transformation of everyday materials is also central to the art of Nazafarin Lotfi, who constructs richly-layered abstract works from newspaper, cardboard, or cast-off items. Intimately-scaled and absent of specific narrative points of reference, her sculptures’ muted palettes and time-worn textures speak instead to the ways in which history and memory accumulate and/or inscribe themselves upon the surface of things over time.
Temporal metamorphosis is likewise enacted in—and activated through—Tina Tahir’s floor piece, which is composed of fragrant spices and brightly colored pigment laid out in decorative patterns like an Oriental rug. Drawing her audience in with ornamental seduction, Tahir lays out designs based on opium poppies and armament graphics meant to suggest socio-political subtexts that have fragmented the Middle East and led to its exploitation by the West. As in all of Tahir’s installations, the audience will eventually be invited to walk on the floor piece, physically dispersing and muddying its rich surface decoration.
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Tags: Chicago, East Garfield Park, Goldfinch, Nazafarin Lotfi, Neha Vedpathak, Rana Siegel, The Particular Poetics of Things, Tina Tahir
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