Vintage Modern

Statement:

ADVOCARTSY’s Summer 2024 group exhibition, VINTAGE MODERN, explores the diverse ways in which contemporary artists of Iranian origin frame and examine the past through the lens of the present.

Iran’s complex sociopolitical, mythological, and art-historical traditions are recalled, reinterpreted and reclaimed via a wide range of creative expressions.

Each of the  represented artists conjures up the past in their own manner – be it through theme, technique, imagery, style, material, and/or subject matter and dispatches it to speak in their  own voice.

Placed in a modern context, the past is not only invoked but interrogated and illuminated in new and unexpected ways.

Whether they are referencing elements of Qajar painting (as do Barrangi & Abbasy) or portraying historical personages (as do Afshar & Afsoon), each artist brings their distinct perspective to this process; Vintage Modern showcases these disparate voices while also highlighting how they remain organically in dialogue with each other.

Ultimately the exhibition speaks to the way memory works and how a shared cultural history can be processed and iterated in myriad ways.

Larger themes like the elasticity of time and the mechanics of remembering also emerge, indicating a congruity of experience that transcends nationality and approaches the universal.