Nairy Baghramian

For the first exhibition of work by Nairy Baghramian in North America the Contemporary Art Gallery presents Class Reunion, an ambitious eighteen piece sculpture comprising a variety of abstract forms. Consistent throughout the artist’s practice, it references literature, theory and modernist design to comment on current issues of materiality, manufacture and display while examining aspects of social and political relationships.

As a collection of posed characters, Class Reunion forms an uncanny tableau, the stage shifting between the immediacy of the inherent material qualities — surface, shape and colour — to a more speculative consideration of meaning and content. The viewer’s experience moves from a consideration of physicality to an examination of social mores, the specific objects evoking a multiplicity of personalities and social identities, encompassing questions of context, institutional framing and the production and reception of contemporary art.

Each individual piece is unique, but combines with others to conjure a cast of characters creating an oddly theatrical scene. Taking on human characteristics accentuated by their proximity and placement, such qualities are suggested as much by their titles, for example The Slacker, The Dandy and Please, After You, as in their poise and structure. A sleek and slender black pole, supporting a bulbous white form seems to be the centre of a small grouping, holding the attention of the others. The simple curve of a line gives an air of confidence while a fold of metal might insinuate shyness.

Working primarily in sculpture, Baghramian brings together a myriad of references — the formal language of Minimalism, Surrealist juxtaposition, stylistic features from interior design and suggestions of absurdist narratives. This mix gives her work an enigmatic quality whereby it is not easily characterized; yet subtle political readings are inferred through the nuanced relationships between singular elements, the very nature of these as objects and their relationship to architectural settings.

For La Colonne Cassée (1871) [the Broken Column (1871)], Baghramian placed almost identical elements back to back, sandwiching the plate glass of the museum windows, visually uniting the interior and exterior of the exhibition space. Two curved metal panels, each anchored by a square white base, create a mirroring effect, their vertical surfaces perforated in differing patterns, breaking the illusion of symmetry and establishing a sense of uneasiness. What appears whole and solid is fragmented; this fracturing also seen in Spanner (Stretcher/Loiterer), a long chrome-plated brass pipe jammed horizontally between two walls, generating tension at the limits of the room. The question of inside and outside is not one of either/or.

This hovering between the part and the whole is continued in Class Reunion, here the notion of the collective presented but from an assembly of pieces, united in shared materiality but separated as individual entities. The word “class” can signify formal categorizations as well as social and economic structures. While the coming together of forms is familiar, resembling social encounters and playing with our desire to classify things, Baghramian seems to suggest the specification of types, division into groupings and ideas of personality or identity are as fabricated as the individual sculptures we see.

Biography

Nairy Baghramian was born in Isfahan, Iran, and now lives and works in Berlin. Major solo exhibitions include Butcher, Barber, Angler & others, Studio Voltaire, London (2009-2010); The Walker’s Day Off, Kunsthalle Baden-Baden (2008); Ein semiotisches Haus, das nie gebaut wurde, Neuer Aachener Kunstverein (2008); Es ist ausser Haus, Kunsthalle Basel (2006). She has been included in a number of international biennials, most recently the 54th Venice Biennale (2011), as well as the 5th Berlin Biennial (2008) and Skulptur Projekte Münster (2007). She has also exhibited Die Geister mögen das Flanieren (2005) and Voluptuous Panic (2004) at Galerie Christian Nagel, Berlin. In 2010 she had a two person show with Phyllida Barlow at The Serpentine Gallery, London. Earlier this year she took part in the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art and received the Hector Art Award (2012) from Kunsthalle Mannheim. Nairy Baghramian is represented by the Galerie Daniel Buchholz in Berlin and Cologne.