Arash Fakhim
Olav & the Flood - mixed media, epoxy panel - 80 x 100 cm
Through humour and experimentation, Fakhim exposes the fluidity of language and human interaction in most of his works. In his Sofreh series, the artist marks personal and found objects onto fabric as cyanotypes and later displays them in Sofreh installations, creating a link between his Iranian origins and Dutch upbringing. In our conversation, we spoke further about his influences and work process, the importance of being connected to his surroundings and the potential in clashing ideas together to create new possibilities.
Beyond materials and textures, your work seems to speak a lot through vivid colours that help set the mood of your installations. Can you share a little about the existing relationship with colour in your practice?
I think color is important because color can work like spices do, just like in a good recipe. By using color you can attract or repel things. It would be crazy for me to think about art without playing with our senses or not to take the power of colors into consideration. In addition, it helps me to create layers. I work simultaneously on several projects in my studio, this happens in a quite organic manner. As a result, things often speak the same form of language or can refer to each other through color, shape, tactility, material use etc. Furthermore, I recently noticed that the use of the color blue is very much reflected in my works.
Chippy - Tablet series - concrete, drawing, polyurethane,
ribble chips, tape & drawing on a cloth 2019
Lucifer - ceramics on going project
The more I think about it the more I become convinced that, this particular color chose me. I don't mean that as a floaty answer but when I look at our collectively inherited fears such as arachnophobia, perhaps the reversed is also possible. For instance coming from the Iran the color connotation such as greens or blues must unconsciously resonate to me, which makes it plausible that therefor I tend to gravitate towards them. Perhaps this is why when I make something in Photoshop I tend to use the color 000FF. Also note that the cyano paintings, which I refer to as echo-maps, are blue as well. In short, I think I have officially ushered in my blue period.
Overview studio shot, of cyanotype paintings hanging
& elements such as weather & time wearing the paintings out.
Many of your works are made with found materials and about giving them new interpretations. Is our consumerist society’s waste production something that you tend to reflect on?
My use of found materials is based on the notion that things that are actively used have a distinct function ascribed tot them, but tend to lose that function and in stead gain a multitude of possibilities once their supposed usability has passed. By losing it’s given function it seems to lose it’s given title as well. It appears in loss of words. Suddenly we can’t name name the thing anymore and tend to say “can you hand me that thing over there?” It is the thingness within the thing that I’m interested in. In other words this momentum of in betweenness. For example, Heidegger proposed with his ding-theory that when the jug is no longer filled with water, it is filled with air, its function suddenly changes. In addition, I try to manifest myself in a fluid state in which I can remain in constant amazement of the things we surround our selves with and how we move around them.
The idea that you’re only aware of something when the context changes or when multiple aspects clash is my field of interest. From materials and objects in the everyday life to the thing that shapes us and clings itself to us. To give a specific example; we are rarely aware of the table leg or our toes through the day, until that moment when the two meet by accident. I hit my toe on the table and suddenly I can feel the mass, but also the force and the tolerance of my toe. This sudden awareness of my surroundings in the everyday resulted in the use of objects as material and vice versa. It was in 2017 when I started to use discarded plastic bags as the surface of my paintings. A discarded container or a re-appropriated carrier of an image. The context of approaching things in this way has been so well described by George Perec in one of his essays entitled the species of spaces, as he so eloquently and simply describes how the meaning of a wall can simply be changed by using it as a carrier of an image. Once you put a picture on a wall the context of the wall changes entirely from a room dividing object, carrying the sealing it becomes now a frame or the carrier of an image.
Pardeh series (made during Leo xIII residency ) -
Cyanotype, textile, epoxy clay, wood, rope, textiles, screenprint,
various domesticated objects
But I have to admit that this re-use or re-contextualizing of materials has also changed my attitude towards my production flow as well. Why should I constantly produce new works on top of new materials? Why shouldn’t I re-use an image in different moments, sizes, roams and contexts? After all, repetition of a shape or color also develops ones handwriting. Often, echoes and remnants of previous paintings can be found within entirely different images.This way of re-using led me to approach my visual language/ archived material more organically and allowing them to re-appear in other context. I often use screen prints as strokes of paint from a brush, that same stroke repeatedly appears in a next painting. Same counts for the cyano-paintings, when I re use certain forms, shapes and objects. If we are to become aware of our surroundings and our ways of doing, then it would appear to me as an odd thing if this same mindset could not be included in the studio as well. So at the moment I’m experiencing this process full on.
In the Sofreh series you work with references to both Iranian and Dutch cultures. Being born in Iran and raised in the Netherlands, how has your multicultured background influenced your creativity?
I would like to give everyone this double perspective of things as a special power. For example, it made me look at painting differently and question why we approach those things in a certain way. Rituals, tradition, shapes, formats, everything in general. It is not so much that I like to question the status quo, its more a way of automatically looking at things with a double view which enables me to approach things objectively, without the circumstances in which they appear and being forced upon me. It develops a critical mindset. In my praxis I think you could clearly see this when you look at it from an intermediate position. Almost all works use this “in-between position”, be it in the form of the spatial experience, or from the shifting tendency between mediums in which they appear.
Sofreh, Amuse Bouche - cyanotype, pencilled drawings,
various domesticated & non domesticated objects, ceramics,
textiles, transfer, screenprint, patchworks, tapestry - various sizes
-2020
The work is often situated in this in-between space. When I approach the medium of painting from a sculptors perspective or when I use a spatial object to arrive at a flat expression, but then choose to present this spatially again. It has this multi layered aspect in which the works seem to be situated in between of things. It is never meant to mislead the viewer and enter irony, but to look at things differently and remain amazed. My work reflects my attitude, a way of being and thinking about identity based on an open perspective in which everything can happen. It is in this way I think that I involve my being and my identity in to my works. I'd rather have my work reflect these aspects of my character in stead of just being an Iranian guy making work involving tapestry, framing it literally and figuratively with my geographical background. The one thing never excludes the other. We should look at things in this way more often, in my opinion. It makes a critical mind and trains the eye. A win win situation If you ask me.
Tablet series - in progress - mixed media -25 x 35 cm
A humorous and relaxed approach sets the tone for most of your practice, either by its general fluidity or by the titles given to the works. Has this laid back approach been helping you stay creative during this pandemic and see it from a different perspective?
I am very happy with this question because I am indeed currently experiencing such a moment right now in which I look back at my work and realize that I want to approach my works loosely again. The seriousness of things occasionally creeps in, causing you to impose rules and restrictions on yourself. Why actually? I don't even allow anyones else to do that, then why do I restrict myself from time to time? I Use humor, or Satire if you will, to put certain aspects of life into perspective and it can’t be the case that humor suddenly ends by the doorstep of my studio. Come to think of it, It helps to separate things from reality and put them in a different context. In addition, humor also helps us to make the heaviness of certain things bearable or at least to put it into perspective. I guess it has been a coping mechanism to be able to blur, understand, ease and forget certain situations.
When Cotton Catches Fire - Cyanotype paintings +
epoxy panels - mixed media - various sizes - 2019
Echo Map - Boteh Jegheh 2020
It has been part of my childhood, my upbringing and it is the thing which caught my attention and connected me to my surroundings. The first time I saw what humor could do, I think it was at the age of 11 or 12 maybe, seeing Eddie Murphy on television, perform his “moms shoe” bit, in his famously and well known “Delirious” stand up show. I saw a black American man on tv with a red leather suit on, the contrast at that age couldn’t be bigger from me, but the way he spoke, about his moms shoe was something I knew too well. So a person that far away, growing up in a total different envirorment, connected to me. Humor just like art (and in the case of Eddie Murphy definitly as art form) can attract, affect and even unify. Laughter is the acceptance of something wholly unknown, an unexpected turn of events or a moment where you were caught of guard, something I often aspire to with my work as well)
You have a few group exhibitions opening soon. What role does collaboration play in your practice?
Being an artist can be somewhat of a lonely existence, and although most people would read a negative connotation with the word lonely I really do like to retreat and figure shit out on my own. That being said, If you’re not in your studio all day then you’re probably inside of your mind. Collaborating helps to round out the wheel a bit better or it can put things in perspective and sometimes it can even help to better portray (visual)sentences a bit more. In most cases, it can be refreshing to inspire each other in ways you wouldn't easily envision yourself doing. Appropriating this inspiration will nevertheless return in a completely different form or quality inside your own praxis. In this way of collaborating I do believe in an artist family.
For example, I can be of influence just as much as they influence me. Some time ago I created a Sofreh with the my artists family wherein paintings were laid out as a spread and spatial artefacts would function as objects on top of it. To create a sofreh in this way sounds easy and organic and It can be, because after all, just like in a real family there is a space of trust, and a space of acknowledgment. The growth of my artist family comes naturally, through humane connections.) When the answer to the following question is a yes then we can collaborate: The question I ask myself is “Would I invite this person to my moms house and have dinner with them?” If the answer is yes, then I can work with you, If the outcome is a no, then this would mean we cannot work together. I can't envision working with someone purely for financial gain or business when I wouldn't want to just spend time – my most valuable currency by far – with them in the first place. So to answer your question the role of collaboration is creating comradery & kinship from time to time.
Echo Map - Pardehye mamai
All Portraits are shot by Victor Wennekes
Sofreh group show overview installation at Nomans Art Gallery, Amsterdam
Artists:
Gijs Assmann
Bonno van Doorn
Niko Démoed
Mischa Doorenweerd
Daan Gielis
Maurice Gobert
Lisette van Hoogenhuyze
Bas van den Hurk
Susanne Khalil Yusefi
Anastasia Kiseleva
Gijs van Lith
Hemaseh Manawi Rad
Cengiz Mengüç
Golrokh Nafisi
Ulrike Rehm
Niko Riedinger
Maria Roosen
Anđela Vidić
Manon Wertenbroek
interview PIETRA GALLI
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