There’s a lot to be mentioned – and far being mentioned – concerning the circumstances and the state of nature at a second in historical past the place a number of species face extinction, the place lush sceneries flip into wastelands and ice withdraws to its fluid state with unexpected penalties. This story of regular, catastrophic evolution appears to carry no place or time for meditation, when motion seems to be the one resolution.
The exhibition “Flora Urbanica” presents a provocatively quiet response to those points in its exploration of the city flora and its amalgamation with the structure that surrounds it. With the title’s spin on the Enlightenment’s craze for assortment, classification and identification of pure phenomena, artists Saman and Sasan Oskouei (maybe finest identified to our readers prior to now as Icy & Sot) undertake a considerably completely different technique than the cautious documentation of the world at play within the scientific methods of taxonomy that also maintain energy immediately: of their creative imaginative and prescient we’re powerlessly enfolded within the ongoing processes of a nature woven into the very material of the cities we inhabit.
Within the exhibited works the intricate anatomies of vegetation and seeds are was summary kinds and transposed onto canvas and sculptural objects as in the event that they had been extensions of the creations of nature with a will of their very own. Seeds breaking via soil, or the sluggish unfurling of a leaf in spring morph into compositions that appear to shift step by step and kaleidoscopically earlier than our eyes. Fluid strains and earthy textures, often trapped in architectural buildings, contribute to a way of being suspended in time, subjected to the identical cyclic and mystic rhythms as these vaguely recognizable species.
The supplies used vary oil paint, wood and metal sculpture to vegetation. Central to the exhibition are two embroidered works based mostly on patterns created by the artists and produced by their mom Sima Bahramghanad, residing in Tabriz, Iran. Embroidery has traditionally adopted its decorative imagery from the natural types of nature, its tactile properties carefully related to the (feminine) physique. Sometimes confined to the intimacy and privateness of the female sphere, it has held a quietly subversive energy as a promoter of secret histories, far faraway from the ecosystems of public discourse. Right here, embroidery tells an equally intimate story of familial bonds nurtured throughout continents. It emerges as an act of resistance towards given political circumstances, which is deeply ingrained within the DNA of the Oskouei brothers’ creative follow.
The evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin (1809-1882) claimed that when fertilizing flowers “bees will act like a camel-hair pencil”, superbly imagining nature as artist. And the painter J.A.M. Whistler (1834-1903) believed that the murals ought to emerge “the best way nature produces vegetation.” Nonetheless completely different in scope and angle, these statements remind us that the Oskouei brothers’ playful pollinations of canvas, metal and cherrywood have precursors within the historical past of artwork. The backyard they domesticate right here is nourished by curiosity, a refined simplicity, bordering on innocence, not by charged statements. The calm presence of their enigmatic objects asks us kindly to depart them alone, to let the quiet unfolding of one thing new occur with out our interference.
Having lengthy included summary and natural shapes of their work, Saman and Sasan Oskouei now take a full plunge into abstraction, albeit honoring their roots in city tradition and their ongoing exploration of our place in nature. The floral structure they current us with serves as a potent metaphor for the resilience and flexibility of nature inside the trendy cityscape, however it additionally invitations viewers to meditate on their very own cohabitation with nature. In different phrases, the Oskouei brothers counsel we re-familiarize ourselves with nature in its city setting, nevertheless unprepared or oblivious we could also be of its magnificence.
