Nairy Baghramian, “Formage de tête”, 29. April- 25. June 2011. Gallerie Daniel Buchholz, Fasanen Straße 30- 10719 Berlin, DE by craniv boyd.

Nairy Baghramian, "Formage de tête", 29. April- 25. June 2011. Gallerie Daniel Buchholz, Fasanen Straße 30- 10719 Berlin, DE by craniv boyd.

 

A micro essay respite with footnotes accompanies in printed words the physical and present sculpture of Iranian born and in Berlin active artist, Nairy Baghramian, on view in the spacious fist floor Gallerie Daniel Buchholz, mid scaled three dimensional works in metal and rubber, that populate the exhibition space that with its worn and creaky Parquet floor contributes an endearing and accessible impression, further contradictions between the abstract process driven theoretical sculpture, and the cautious linguistic theoretical laden press release.

 

Nairy Baghramian, is able to create sculpture that looks curious, and for all its material attributes and rubber brushed metal, is graphic and flat, monochrome dyed rubber in colors that look at home on a prophylactic nude or beige, mauve or off white yellow side of the spectrum.

 

The metal objects are hard to identify, willfully or playfully mysterious, sealed off and hung up hanging on two and a half meters tall poles from a large S shaped hook, in their hanging the metal convex shaped "covers" "industrial sized cooking Lids" we can read what ever we like into them, appear like meet carcasses hanging in a butchers freezer depot, cold from the looks of the material, and dead too in a way from the painful hook that holds the metal object on the free standing pool.

 

Other works are table like, rectangular, framed in metal, with four metal legs and a slab of cast rubber laying on top, angular recessed forms push and pull in the frozen rubber surface, a relieve that at just above waist level, is a palimpsest of half forgotten objects. To set a real item atop the rubber surface draped over the metal legs and frame would run the risk of collapsing the work, that despite its stature as mid sided free standing sculpture, is oddly delicate coy in its play with presence and absence, via the processes of its creation, cast from something, available to see, yet fragmentary in its appearance. Sheet of rubber to what end, G. Deleuze, F. Guattari, H. Michaux, or D. Hubermans, might know, in addition to Neiry Baghramian himself, for all are cited in the end notes section of the press release.

 

Does it serve the work of Nairy Baghramian, and his art work well to have an essay with the project of binding the current instance of his oeuvre to French post structuralist thinking? Or is it an order of excessive intellectual fashionableness to draw a line between 60's vintage European postmodern critique and post millennial installation art that is driving back home over the speed limit to autonomous substantial three-dimensional art? Somehow there is a kind of hermetic abstraction transpire ring when encountering Baghramian's work for the first time in the real, I hoped for more of a transparent explanatory, and thereby conventional press text, but in the slightly opaque, text where you have to hunt down the materials and process that created the work and the artists name is mentioned, once, at the top, together with the title of his exhibition, you are in a way provided with a round about impersonal place from which to view his work. By craniv boyd.