NEW YORK, NY – Chelsea’s Agora Gallery will feature the original work of Fariba Baghi in Contemporary Perspectives. The exhibition opens April 1, 2017 and runs through April 21, 2017 with an opening reception on Thursday, April 6 from 6-8 pm.
Fariba Baghi paints ethereal abstracts that explore the connections between the human body and the delicate elements of nature. Though she paints mainly in earthen tones, Baghi achieves a lightness in her work, due to her mastery of texture. In acrylic, homemade organic paint, and sometimes even in cement, she stretches and layers her colors. Paint becomes a gauzy film, dries up here, and floats away there.
Baghi’s personal experiences contain unusual paradoxes, the contrasts of which show up in her work. Though interested in art from a young age, growing up in Iran made it difficult for her to find models to draw. Today, her figures are imbued with mystery: their faces are obscured, their body language uncertain. They dissipate at the edges, turning into pure pigment. Baghi also sometimes incorporates photographs for a mixed-media collage, which adds to the otherworldly effect of the universe she has created.
Baghi was born in Tehran, Iran and today lives in Toronto, Canada, where she went to college. She has donated several of her paintings to the Canadian film company Phoolan Devi.
Exhibition Dates: April 1, 2017 – April 21, 2017
Reception: Thursday, April 6, 6:00pm - 8:00pm
Gallery Hours: Tues-Sat 11:00am – 6:00pm
Gallery Location: 530 West 25th St, Chelsea, New York
Event URL: http://www.agora-gallery.com/artistpage/Fariba_Baghi.aspx
Featured Artists:
Contemporary Perspectives
Lauralee Franco | Fariba Baghi | Craig Frankowski | Stephanie E. Graham | Gail Comes | Bobbie See
About the Exhibition
Contemporary Perspectives: The New Art History
Agora Gallery is pleased to present Contemporary Perspectives, a new collective exhibition highlighting all the ways which show that the past and present are in constant dialogue. Contemporary Perspectives assembles a small group of artists who approach classic subject matter with fresh eyes. Their work contains echoes of art history while managing to be entirely forward-thinking.
Half of the six featured artists work in oil. One depicts romantic landscapes as a series of highly stylized, streamlined patterns. The second paints florals, with an updated hyperrealism and irregular canvases. The third paints portraits that are composed as traditional reverential busts. However the colors are saturated, the body language is animated, and her subjects are women of color, a historically overlooked group. There are two acrylic painters: one creates dramatic visions of completely imaginary forests, and other places realistic figures in foggy, abstracted landscapes. The last artist works in ink and mixed-media to create meticulous botanicals that recall both scientific catalogues and the watercolor works of nineteenth-century leisure painters.
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