JTF (just the facts): A total of 13 color photographic works, framed in white and unmatted, and hung against white walls in the main gallery space, the entry area, and the back office. All of the works are two-color lithographs on Zerkall Bütten paper, made in 2014. Physical sizes range from roughly 20×26 to 49×38 (or reverse) and the prints are variously available in edition sizes of 2+1AP, 3+1AP, and 4+1AP. The show was organized in conjunction with Sun/Ra Projects (here). (Installation shots below.)
Comments/Context: For those accustomed to Shirana Shahbazi’s bold geometric abstractions or her crisp studio still lifes of everyday objects, the images in her current show will come as some surprise. Taken as part of a family road trip from Zurich to Tehran (with a few additional images from roadside America thrown in for good measure), the pictures find the Iranian-born photographer momentarily stepping out into the world, generally leaving behind heady conceptualism and embracing the idiosyncrasies of the chance encounter.
Subject matter-wise, at the simplest level, these are travel snapshots, scenes gathered from gas stations, roadside diners, motels, and rest stops, capturing the atmosphere of her journeys and documenting details that caught her eye. The twist here is that Shahbazi has printed them using a lithographic process, hand mixing the colors and painstakingly tuning the large prints, and she’s limited herself to just two colors per image, shifting the tonal ranges out of normal. The works are gently tactile, with mottled washes of color that are reminiscent of watercolors or Pictorialist expression.
Shahbazi’s tweaked palette runs the gamut from faded and atmospheric to wildly manipulated. Spiky palm trees twist between blue and orange, a vase of flowers mixes yellow and pink, and a strangely ominous gas station wanders from yellow to blue. In each case, the colors feel pared down and additive, like deliberate improvisational layers placed on top of the original subject. A pink and green roadside dinosaur feels oddly surreal, while a faded pink and purple desert scene threatens to disappear into approximation. By separating the colors out from the imagery, she’s called attention to her choices – the bright orange tower of puffy clouds, the deep blue swimming pool light abstraction, the smear of purple in the sky above the mile marker road sign. Some works feel like timeless found postcards that have lost some of their original colors, while others have a touch of something slightly darker and more uncertain.
While flowing hair in the wind and a shiny roadside diner might be obvious classics of this genre, Shahbazi’s travel souvenirs are quietly unsettling, recreating that heightened sense of awareness that comes with being someplace entirely foreign, where mundane everyday details become intense visual stimuli. A hanging curtain suddenly seems like something we desperately want to see behind.
What stands out here is Shahbazi’s dismantling of a well known process to find elements that have enabled her to rethink her photographs. In these pictures, she has pulled apart lithography and modified it for her own specific use, opening up options for using color more directly as a mood setter. She’s made the familiar unfamiliar, and therefore made us look again with fresh eyes.
Collector’s POV: The works in this show range in price from $9000 to $20000 based on size. Shahbazi’s work has little consistent secondary market activity, so gallery retail likely remains the best option for those collectors interested in following up.
