Mirak Jamal at Sultana

Artist: Mirak Jamal

Exhibition title: Full Circle

Venue: Sultana, Paris, France

Date: April 5 – June 2, 2018

Photography: © aurélien mole / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Sultana, Paris

For his second solo show at Sultana gallery, Berlin -based Iranian-Canadian artist Mirak Jamal presents a series of paintings that intertwine a multitude of stories and narratives. Human-like figures with animalistic and machine-like features are embattled in an imaginative world, full of contradictions and possibilities. If some elements depicted in the paintings refer directly to the title of the exhibition, such as round blades and bicycle gears, Full Circle also questions the artist’s creative process.

A full circle implies the return as a starting point, the possibility to encompass everything, or even a doubt – where to start? where to end? The artist introduces for the first time in his practice the use of oil paint combined with other media. On the canvas, he develops a layered approach, summoning divergent techniques, such as photographic transfers, spray paint halos and elaborated scrawlings. This variation of media and of stylistic approaches allow an open-ended practice, in which the exercise itself is the outcome. In this case, a selected showcase of window shots into different possibilities is summoned.

Process or completion, Full Circle allows the artist to enter into a circular conversation and to come perhaps to full circle in terms of a practice of painting, and drawing, among other things. It appears both as a synthesis of approaches and a stylistic direction at a crossroads, begging the question where now this circle will wheel on.

Mirak Jamal est né 1979 à Téhéran (Iran) et a vécu en URSS, en Allemagne, U.S.A. et au Canada. Il vit et travaille actuel-lement à Berlin. Il y a résolument quelque chose qui tient du récit (et des récits) dans l’art de Mirak Jamal. L’histoire per-sonnelle s’imbrique dans une temporalité faite de multitudes d’histoires que les hommes ont successivement apposées dans la matière pour ne pas oublier. C’est dans les matériaux de construction que Mirak Jamal a trouvé sa matière de prédilection. Il y inscrit des récits, des images, des réminiscences d’un passé d’errance après que sa famille a fuit un Iran à l’aube de la révolution. Ses récentes expositions personnelles incluent -cornered-, 427 gallery, Riga (2017) ; IRONIMUS ‘91, Galerie Rolando Ansel-mi, Berlin ; In Praise of Limestone, L’Ascensore, Palerme ; Mother! Minsk! Where are you?, Sultana, Paris ; my dear friends in berlin, Ashley Berlin, Berlin (toutes en 2016).

Ses récentes expositions collectives incluent A Good Neighbour, cur. Elmgreen & Dragset à la 15th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul; The Stillness of a Departure avec Anna Ročňová & Sung Tieu, cur. Christina Gigliotti, Polansky gallery, Prague ; moving is in every direction, cur. Anna-Catharina Gebbers & Gabriele Knapstein, avec Christopher Kulendran, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (toutes en 2017); Nada Miami, Galerie Sultana, Miami ; Dream Song 386, Cooper Cole Gallery, Toronto (toutes en 2016).