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A Solo Exhibition “SHADOW MATTER” Opening Reception April 28, 2024, 4-8 PM
MATTER STUDIO GALLERY is thrilled to announce Shadow Matter, an exhibition of Aydin Hamami’s abstract, process-oriented paintings. Hamami creates these canvases by the layering and juxtaposition of raw materials ranging from tar, wax, organic matter, and shellac on canvas. While his work focuses on process, his new exhibit in ‘Shadow Matter’ reveals the blurring of the lines between what is real, what is the now and what is the reflection, where these elements overlap, and how they are interdependent. What is memory, what is imagined, what we create, and where the collective knowledge, energy, and experiences of the present condition are recorded, ever fleeting, and continually transformed? These elegant and ephemeral “paintings” record and evoke awareness of shared familiar moments of our universal human consciousness.
Artist Statement: What is a shadow?
What is a shadow? Things obscured from our view begin to take on a life of their own and a sense of anxious mystery. Schrödinger’s cat is at once alive and dead before the box is opened and the cat is observed. The monster under a child’s bed is real and imagined until a light is shone into the darkness. And the more that things of the familiar are removed from reference, the more detached they become from our reality.
Shadows define our ability to distinguish objects from one another, yet they also obscure. They have no substance, and yet they have a presence. They may seem immutable at one moment, then change their very nature the next, and their operation, while knowable, remains the stuff of secrets.
The paintings in SHADOW MATTER are, in their construction, the very opposite of shadow. While shadows have no physical presence, these pieces are bound to their physicality. At their core, they are born from their materials and the process of working with them. They are objects of tar, wax, shellac, things that have weight, that can be manipulated, that can be touched.
Working with these materials is an exercise in unpredictability. They are stubborn, often resisting control. Yet, it is in this struggle that their true essence and vitality are revealed. Through their physicality, a connection to the ephemeral nature of the shadow and silhouette begins to emerge. Their aggressive composition coexists with something softer, creating a visual representation of passing time, fleeting moments, and stark, flat spaces against the painted surface. Their forms are voids, emptiness, and quiet, still forming space
- Matter Studio Gallery
- 5080 West Pico Blvd, LA CA 90019
- Gallery Hours: Friday 4-6 PM and Saturday and Sunday, 12-6 PM
- Private appointments are also available.
- Contact Gallerist Karla Funderburk at 323-697-4988
