Much like Zero - abstractions by Shirana Shahbazi - a lust for the visual arts without referencing complaints at Fotomuseum Winterthur

How real or abstract is photography? This question has been widely debated since the advent of photography itself. During the 1960s and 1970s, one tended to speak of self-contained photography and that very subject has seemed to regain momentum in recent times.

Shirana Shahbazi's work has been oscillating within the sphere of materialism and abstraction. Often, her oeuvre combines pictures in quite unlikely pairings.

For example, one can find two portraits next to an abstract array of colour, next to a black & white picture of a steppe landscape, followed by a still life with berries and fruit and finally two carpets, created according to photographs of a young man and a sunlit landscape.

Her work emits a lust and passion for the visual arts: portraits, landscapes, cityscapes, still life and abstract colours are all in her portfolio, the tools of her trade. Composed, found, observed, captured, printed onto photography paper or blown up on giant billboards by a painter, maybe turned into wallpaper or used as carpets, gleaming, shining and warm printed carpets.

Yet, time and time again, she infused her work with question marks and doubts – until the day she dared to take the step into the world of the totally abstract, glowing with pure colour. The newest pictures are constructed with colourful shapes – most of them abstract, rhythmic colours on a large scale. Shirana Shahbazi creates a captivating and radiating visual impact.

“We do not intend to create a world. To move and act in a creative way is enough for now, maybe something new will come of it, but not as a result of a forced contextualization with a new world view, but if anything, as a self-fulfilling prophecy, full of hope that it might lose control as a whole and create bastardisation.” These lines by the German painter Bernd Ribbeck define the basic idea behind the new interesting abstraction, in which Shirana is currently located. 'Much like Zero'.

The exhibition at the Fotomuseum Winterthur features many new photographs as well as the work-in-progress carpet, which has been one of Shirana's projects for ten years now.

The exhibition was organised by Fotomuseum Winterthur in close collaboration with the artist herself. Urs Stahel is the curator. The exhibition will be accompanied by a bilingual booklet (ENG/GER), text by Urs Stahel.


Much like Zero - Shirana Shahbazi
03.09.2011 - 13.11.2011
Fotomuseum Winterthur