SHIRAZEH HOUSHIARY – PNEUMA
2021-07-12The five new paintings – Pneuma (2020), Forgetting the Word (2020), Enigma (2020), Pieta (2021) and Loci (2021) – manifest an abstraction that is at once haptic and optic; their surfaces taut with a connective energy that holds pigment and fine skeins of pencil-work in mesmerising suspension.
The works arise from a meditative practice that takes breath as its medium and conceptual framework. For Houshiary, the physical manifestation of breath is the word. As is the case in each of the paintings the artist has produced over her fortyyear career, at the basis of these works is a web formed from two words, superimposed onto one another and inscribed with focussed repetition. Houshiary uses words to approach something wordless, the interconnectedness of all things.
Houshiary’s process is inherently physical. To produce these finely wrought surfaces and their depths, she must inhabit her canvases. Placing them flat on the floor of her studio, she moves across them, building layers of inscriptions on top of the sediments formed from pouring water mixed with pure pigment. Concentrating on dynamic movement, the mind and body unify.
Opposite – Installation view
Exhibition runs through to July 31st, 2021
Lisson Gallery
22 Cork Street
W1S 3NA
London
