Arghavan Khosravi: Beyond The Canvas: Jamestown Arts Center, Jamestown, RI
“That’s what painting does; it organizes vision in a certain way or suggests that certain things be paid attention to and certain other things not be paid attention to. It functions in that way to a certain extent in our civilization.” - Jasper Johns
The Jamestown Arts Center presents Beyond The Canvas, a group exhibition featuring works by David Barnes, Thomas Crouch, Bob Dilworth, Arghavan Khosravi, Luke Randall, Hannah Stahl, Yann Weiner, & Coral Woodbury. Beyond The Canvas centers on painters that are pushing the boundaries of painting either in genre, subject matter or material.
“That’s what painting does; it organizes vision in a certain way or suggests that certain things be paid attention to and certain other things not be paid attention to. It functions in that way to a certain extent in our civilization.” - Jasper Johns
It is common to approach painting as if we, the viewers, are looking into or out of a window in the artist’s mind. For Beyond the Canvas curators Karen Conway and Brooke Erin Goldstein showcase a sampling of contemporary painters who choose to make that window into a doorway. This takes the viewer further into the painter’s world and perspective. Each of the eight artists shown push the boundaries of painting in a variety of ways by playing with genre, subject matter or materials.
Arghavan Khosravi, David Barnes and Thomas Crouch highlight politically and socially relevant events and ideas both in and out of context evoking thought and discussion amongst a variety of viewers. Arghavan Khosravi was raised in Tehran, Iran.
Khosravi’s work is deeply connected to her own personal experience of the culture and politics of her homeland of Iran that probe both personal and political experiences by integrating historical motifs with imagery taken from popular culture and contemporary media.
David Barnes states: “In recent years I have been trying to create images that reflect the precarious time in which we live, while simultaneously addressing more universal themes of our human life such as transience and beauty. My paintings have become a blend of confrontation and contemplation.”
Thomas Crouch’s images depict his interpretation of human migration, with regards to the current paranoia of politically driven subterfuge of information. “This series began in 2016 with the Muslim travel ban. It ends with the current xenophobic indictment of all Central American and Hispanic people immigrating to the United States.”
Visitors of the Jamestown Arts Center will be invited to move through Beyond the Canvas in multiple ways with the works they encounter. The entryway and small gallery will present smaller works from most of the artists allowing one to have intimate encounters with each painter as you arrive. This leads into the main gallery with many large works some of which tower over the viewer and envelope them in each painter’s thoughts. In this way the curators, Conway and Goldstein, lead the viewer through a show within a show creating a meta-ness to the experience intentionally leaving people with more questions than answers.
- Text courtey of Brooke Erin Goldstein & Karen Conway, Jamestown Arts Center
