"In the Shadows" is a solo exhibition by Fereidoun Ghaffari, with curatorial mentorship from Phong Bui. The exhibition presents a series of self-portraits by the artist rendered in thickly layered and textured oil paint, from close ups of his face to full body paintings at scale. The works on view as part of In the Shadows represent only a small portion of Ghaffari’s ongoing series of self-portraits, which he began in 2006. In these paintings, stripped bare of any markers that might suggest a particular culture or time, Ghaffari – who was raised in Iran and is currently based in Brooklyn – resists the politicization of his art. For the artist, painting is “a process of digging into the inner self,” and a quest for intimacy and meaning that is universally human.Through his repetitive and continuous process, Ghaffari uses painting as a way to consider the basic elements of humanity. Having followed Ghaffari’s work in the past four years, mentor Phong Bui locates it within a Western art historical understanding of self-portraiture, from Jan van Eyck’s Portrait of a Man to Rembrandt’s lifetime practice of using himself as a subject; from Picasso’s cubist and surrealist representations of self to Frida Kahlo’s Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird.///

Like these earlier works, Ghaffari’s self-portraits convey an evolution of the self over time, and are “predicated upon a necessity to engage in a mediation upon life’s experiences in totality, or to confront the deeper aspects of [oneself] from within.”Unlike these historical examples, however, few of Ghaffari’s self-portraits presented as part of In the Shadows are considered by the artist to be finished. Observes catalogue essayist Sinclair Spratley: “Ghaffari’s paintings reveal that the project of self-making is ever developing and changing; what seems like a stable self-image one day can look like a distorted, incorrect projection the next. In this way, Ghaffari refuses to be lockstep with other painting practices that permit easy access to the work’s content or internal logic, rather challenging the viewer to sit uncomfortably with confrontation. An encounter with such rawness and vulnerability brings the self-making project of the work into fuller view; while one may not ‘see’ themself in the work, they might begin to understand that they, too, are an iterative conglomeration of dozens of views, perspectives, and poses that might, one day, add up to a singular project.”