The Art House is delighted to share Harmony Is Central, a new offsite exhibition created by
Wakefield-based artist Bijan Amini-Alavijeh.
Bijan Amini-Alavijeh is an artist whose practice is informed by Medieval English and Persian
art and architecture. Working with sculpture and drawing, he references both cultures’
understanding of sacred geometries and their extensive lexicons of decoration. His work
incorporates motifs and patterns commonly found on the facades and stonework of
buildings. These include floral and abstract decoration seen throughout Persian crafts,
carpets and ironmongery.
Amini-Alavijeh is interested in how people read art and architecture. He examines the implicit
and explicit meanings that are often inherited, forgotten, intuited, rediscovered, or
misinterpreted. The artist explores how we might reshape our understanding of abstraction,
tradition and ornamentation to rethink how we consider spirituality and mortality, as well as
our relationship with nature and geometry in the 21st century.
Harmony is Central draws out motifs that derive from sacred geometry, and brings attention to singular objects that are either recreations, or abstracted forms based on the familiar. This work celebrates material, form and tradition. Sculptures are placed on top of a new floor painting that acts as both a platform and shares relations to the Persian Sofreh, a decorative fabric used to serve food – a core textile from his upbringing.
The sculptures originate from hand carvings, cardboard maquettes and wooden moulds, which are then cast in various materials, such as: plaster, jesmonite, concrete, and resin. Each material is chosen for its different and varied properties, with some differing from the opulence of their references. Amini-Alavijeh uses this space to celebrate these objects – being a discovering, understanding, documenting and a starting point to what could be possibly much larger; and gives focus to the purer forms that provide the core basis of sacred geometry.
Exhibition space provided courtesy of Makey Wakey, The Art House’s partnership with The Ridings Shopping Centre.
Header image: Harmony Is Central poster. Courtesy of the artist.
Side image: Courtesy of the artist.