Avish Khebrehzadeh at Daniel Silverstein - New York - Brief Article

The quiet drawings and animations of Avish Khebrehzadeh offer poignant, symbolic narratives. Born in Tehran in 1969, she moved to America six years ago and lives and works in Washington, D.C. She draws simple figures with pencil on brown paper that she sometimes stains with olive oil. In these works, longing is poetically expressed by figures on a beach and in a forest. It is easy to see much of the work as a contemplative view of the human condition, both emotional and environmental.

The flat backgrounds and ghostly figures invite the viewer to meditate, and the lack of color in the paintings universalizes their effects. As in a dream, everything has elemental significance. The drawings allude to emotions and ideas without spelling them out; the lack of specific reference is intended to be mysteriously beautiful.

In the large work Untitled V (2001), Khebrehzadeh shows a group of three people, two sitting and one standing, against a light ground that is met by a darker yellow in the upper part of the picture. To the right is another standing individual, who appears to wield a metal detector--the kind people use to find money on a beach. One wonders who these people are and how they are connected to each other. Though they inhabit the same space, they suggest loneliness. In Viewers and the Circus (2001), 16 grouped, faceless figures watch two others garbed in white, one of whom turns a somersault while the other, perhaps a dwarf, grimaces at the viewer. The featureless crowd seems indifferent, or even threatening. Khebrehzadeh seems to suggest the uneasy relations between the individual and the group.

Red Hair (2000), an animated film shown on a monitor, is drawn in the same style and looks direct and handmade compared with most contemporary animation. In this work, a seal hunts for fish in a pool. Despite being fed by a character named Adam, the seal wants more--hunger follows everywhere. Red Hair functions as an allegory of desire. Like the paintings, it can move the viewer with its bare yet lyric scenes of survival.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group