The oeuvre of Iranian-born, Swiss-based artist Shirana Shahbazi (born 1974) reflects her ongoing interest in the relationship between images and their surfaces, as well as the relationship between various artistic media and their iconic qualities. The artist's book Monstera presents Shahbazi's recent abstract work, which features richly hued colors, objects and geometric forms. For these photographs, Shahbazi arranged real forms and bodies in her studio as if staging a still life and then photographed them from different vantage points. The light and color effects of the images suggest the kind of decorative abstraction—so easily produced digitally—that appears in screensavers and desktop wallpapers, but these are digital effects achieved through laborious analogue means. Brilliantly colored and intriguingly suggestive of depth, the photographs oscillate between representation and abstraction. Shahbazi has exhibited at MoMA, the New Museum, the Hammer Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago.
Featured image is reproduced from Shirana Shahbazi: Monstera.
Here is an artist's book for artists, a burst of color after an especially colorless cold-spell. Iranian-born, Zurich-based photographer Shirana Shahbazi's vibrant and engaging 256-page story features not a word of text; each and every spread juxtaposes two images that converse. Abstraction, sequence, color, and hints of narrative create mysterious associations that make you want to keep looking until you've flipped the very last page. This is a book to collect, and to give. continue to blog
FORMAT: Pbk, 6.5 x 9 in. / 256 pgs / 256 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $39.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $53.95 ISBN: 9783037644003 PUBLISHER: JRP|Ringier AVAILABLE: 2/24/2015 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of print AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: WORLD Excl FR DE AU CH
Published by JRP|Ringier. Edited by Manuel Krebs, Shirana Shahbazi.
The oeuvre of Iranian-born, Swiss-based artist Shirana Shahbazi (born 1974) reflects her ongoing interest in the relationship between images and their surfaces, as well as the relationship between various artistic media and their iconic qualities. The artist's book Monstera presents Shahbazi's recent abstract work, which features richly hued colors, objects and geometric forms. For these photographs, Shahbazi arranged real forms and bodies in her studio as if staging a still life and then photographed them from different vantage points. The light and color effects of the images suggest the kind of decorative abstraction—so easily produced digitally—that appears in screensavers and desktop wallpapers, but these are digital effects achieved through laborious analogue means. Brilliantly colored and intriguingly suggestive of depth, the photographs oscillate between representation and abstraction. Shahbazi has exhibited at MoMA, the New Museum, the Hammer Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago.
