Maloney Fine Arts is pleased to present
The Sacred Wheel, an exhibition of
new ceramic sculpture and works on paper by Los Angeles artist Yassi Mazandi.
Taking her cues from the symmetry and repetition of natural forms—petals,
crystals, snowflakes, and skeletons—Yassi has
created a personal structural vocabulary in clay with infinite compositional
variations. These biologically inspired sculptures seem simultaneously ancient
and futuristic, mechanical and natural, masculine and feminine—equally
referencing sacred geometry, the art of
Sri Yantras, crystal formation, bridges and fractal geometry.
Labyrinthine and seemingly engineered,
these one-of-a-kind works were initially divined from thrown ceramic vessels,
with manual cuts and bends in the pliable material resulting in rhythmic
objects that have now evolved from recognizable vessels to monochromatic
“foreign” objects displayed on vertical stands, cementing their status as
sculpture in a wide variety of materials and scales. Titled Flowers, these elemental shapes and
complex patterns are based on mathematical principles but they are not simply
systematic as the hand of the artist always intervenes, pulling, carving,
finishing and layering. One of the objects in this exhibition introduces a new
process and medium—a geopolymer-based stone from the Dolomites, finished by hand—created
in collaboration with a fabricator in Italy.
During her art residency at the Robert Rauschenberg
Foundation, Yassi took advantage of the opportunity to explore other media –
namely, painting, printmaking, and photography—translating three-dimensional
scans of her sculptures into two dimensions, which she calls sculptographs. She
digitally manipulates aurasmic colors, in hues ranging from electric bright
pink to midnight blue, and ultimately prints some on canvas and paper, some of
which she works by hand, sanding and painting the surfaces. These shapes take
on astronomical dimension in this form, appearing like generative novas or
other cosmic events.
Yassi Mazandi was
born in Tehran, Iran and lives and works in Los Angeles. She studied advanced photography and art
in Oxford, England and sculpture and ceramics at Greenwich House Pottery, New
York City. In 2012 she was an artist in
residence at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation in Captiva,
Florida.
The last solo exhibition of Mazandi’s work in Los Angeles was Architectonic, at JF Chen, in 2008. Her
work has been exhibited internationally and is in major private collections
here and abroad.
Installation View, 11 Flowers, 2014
Installation View, 72 Food Chakras, 2014
Michael, 2013. English Porcelain with Clear Glaze
Untitled (Thirteen Petals), 2013. English Porcelain with Clear Glaze
