On View in conjunction with The Infinite Sublime will be Firooz Zahedi: Abstraction, featuring a selection of cubist photographs taken from 2000 to 2013. A variety of abstract compositions are skillfully created using small Lucite cubes, gels, and lighting.
— Tim B. Wride“All too often photographers who have attained a high level of success within the commercial and editorial realms find it difficult to navigate the art world and gallery systems. Many either ignore the instincts and interests that defined them in one arena when they move to another; or, adamantly insist that the images they have done in one suffices for the other. Rare is the photographer who allows the sensibility that imbues one aspect of his output to organically infuse his work for the other. Rarer still is the photographer who can do it successful. Firooz is that rare photographer.”
Hues of bright greens, blues, reds, and oranges wrap tightly around the Lucite cubes, giving expression and meaning to an object often thought to be simple. The six sides of the cubes become enlarged with purpose and intention, as if each face is brimming with its own story and attitude. Firooz is able to use his impeccable observation skills to create abstract images that become more than the sum of their parts.
— Tim B. Wride“These abstracted compositions achieve through the use of small Lucite cubes, lighting, and gels let Firooz forefront his ability to activate the picture plane and elicit a visceral, optic, and cerebral response without replying on facial recognition.”
Instead of relying on emotion identification in facial expressions to elicit his intended response from the viewer, Firooz is able to alter how light, edges, and formation to become characters themselves.
— Tom B. Wride“Whether talking about art or telling tales, walking at the beach or sharing a meal, spending time with Firooz is a session in visual sensibility. It becomes increasingly apparent that what is important is not necessarily what he notices, but how he notices what he notices.”
Also on view with Abstraction is Firooz Zahedi’s Film Fades Faster than Light. This series was produced by Firooz using archival images from the late 1970’s to the late 1980’s. By virtue of either time or his own intervention through chemicals and light exposure, the film originals materiality becomes something completely new.
— Firooz Zahedi, on "Fame Fades Faster Than Film"“Ten years ago I came across a 35mm color slide that I had shot in 1980. It was for a fashion ad campaign. Due to condensation, moisture had penetrated into the plastic sleeve where the slide was stored and the colors had spread into each other and made the face and parts of the body of the model unrecognizable. Yet at the same time it had made the image so much more interesting and vibrant.”
An aspect of this collection of images is the theme of celebrity, and how the obscuring of their identity through distortion of the film itself, much like how time has the ability to erode away the status of fame and what that means for the idea of “celebrity” itself.
— Firooz Zahedi“I chose images of the celebrities and models and sprayed water on them and sealed them up in plastic bags. Periodically, over a period of two months or so, I would look to see the extent of the ‘damage.’ Once I felt the subject’s identity had become obscured, I had the images scanned and printed. Now the actual film with its explosion of colors had become the ‘Star’ attraction as opposed to the celebrity whose fame had faded over those years”
FIROOZ ZAHEDI was born in Tehran in 1949. He grew up in England and, in 1969, he went to the United States to attend the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. After a brief career as a diplomat he enrolled at the Corcoran School of Art and graduated in 1976 earning a degree in Visual Communication. While still at art school he began working as a photographer for Andy Warhol’s Interview. He secured a contract with Vanity Fair in 1990, and his photographs have appeared on the covers of the British GQ, French Vogue, Tatler, Time, Glamour, Town & Country, InStyle, and many other publications.
Ranging from the iconic poster for the movie Pulp Fiction to album covers for Barbra Streisand and Diana Ross, Zahedi has produced prominent advertising and publicity campaigns for film, television, and music companies. He has exhibited his celebrity portraits as well as his fine art photography at galleries in Los Angeles, New York, London, Dubai, and Basel. His photographs are in the permanent collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as well as the Norton Museum in West Palm Beach, Florida. My Elizabeth, a pictorial book of his 35 years of friendship with Elizabeth Taylor, was published by d in 2016. City of Angels, a book on a select group of architectural homes in Los Angeles was published by Vendome Press in 2018. His recently published book of celebrity photographs, Look at Me, was published by Pointed Leaf Press.
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