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Interviewed by Andrea Tarsia, Head of Exhibitions and Projects
Andrea Tarsia- What drew you to working in sculpture?
Shahin Afrassiabi- I never thought of myself as a sculptor. I started by making paintings of loosely grid-based structures. I was looking at photos I had of the shantytowns on the outskirts of Mexico City. They're built on the side of mountains, so that from the road they look vertical. I was also thinking about the way oriental paintings were painted, where there's no depth, just verticality...there is no background... I thought that if I pushed the paintings into real space, as real objects it would become much more interesting... I liked the way objects of different categories destabilise each other, possibly even empty each other.
AT- Your work also refers to architecture and interior decoration.
SA- Architecture provides spaces to be filled... The way a curtain inhabits and expands the idea of a window, for example, but anything really, from the clothes we wear to the objects we use. Empty buildings are very impersonal. I like the idea that those beautiful lines might actually be degraded by the inhabitants' tastes, or mine.
AT- There is a biographical element to some of your works, such as 'Poser', 2000, which includes a pair of sneakers.
SA- The thing about the sneakers was the label. Those who know will recognise them to be fake immediately because there are four stripes on the side instead of three and the logo is not pointed at the top. If you look at the label it says Dadibas. They are Mexican, this is what happens with big labels over there...appropriating the name is a way of latching onto the more known label, misappropriating it in fact. False identity that folded back into the structure of the work...
AT- Your work seems to be engaged with a fault line that runs through Modernism - between the aesthetics of form and an engagement with lived experience.
SA- I think when you take away or undermine the use value of a recognisable object...you in fact highlight that value, it becomes a question. I think making art is problematic, if it's to be more than just entertainment, perhaps now more than any other time. I recognise the fact that looking is a habit, visual pleasure is a habit that needs to be acknowledged but also challenged; this is why we need art. The best art always takes something from the real world and subjects it to a formal analysis in order to expose the machinery of reality...
AT- The act of making your materials is clearly not important, it's the composition, the arrangement.
SA- Yes, I think that arrangement, in the end, is the most important thing... I have found a way of working that makes me look at the shape of the world, the structure of it, the arrangements in it.
AT- How do you develop the work from an initial idea?
SA- I collect material, samples - fabrics, wallpaper, catalogues of building materials, of furniture etc. I start with a computer drawing that eventually becomes a plan view of the work. This comes from things I see around me, again arrangements. Then this continues to thinking what kind of fabric to use, the carpet, the colour and how all these elements affect each other. In the studio I also make provisional models, photographs and ad hoc arrangements of things that inform the displays.
The artist is based in London. Recent shows include Vilma Gold and Jeffrey Charles Galleries, London; he was nominated for the Becks Future Prize in 2001.
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