Amir Kamand | "Aliens VS Gorillas": Dastan's Basement

Dastan is pleased to present a solo exhibition of works by Amir Kamand titled “Aliens vs Gorillas” at Dastan’s Basement. The exhibition will open on Friday, 21 May, 2021, and will be open on display for public viewing until June 4. His second solo show at Dastan’s Basement, this exhibition features an installation of wooden sculptures. The exhibition has been curated by Mamali Shafahi with additional contributions by Hasti V.Goudarzi as set designer. 

“Aliens vs Gorillas” depicts an unlikely hybrid community of diverse species; populated with humans, aliens, primates, monsters, half-breed birds and robots, gathered to fight a mock-apocalyptic war. The spectrum of these wooden characters ––making use of witty references, violent pathos and comic deformation of natural forms, lead up to the formation of a sarcastic atmosphere. The series’ tongue-in-cheek playfulness roots in Amir Kamand’s adaptation of science-fiction fantasy and pop culture to narrate a personal mythology. In the artist’s alternative “initiation story”, as he puts it, “the aliens are the original manufacturers of human species and the underlying agents behind the world’s current situation. These figures, in their bizarre posture and position, ironically refer to real-world events and situations, radically differing from what they ostensibly express”. 

Amir Kamand was born in 1960 Tehran, Iran. He began working in plastic injection molding as a teenager, established a plastic manufacturing plant in his early twenties, and moved to Kish island to work in the clothing industry soon after. His life was given a twist when he left his hometown for Tabriz and was introduced to waxing through a vacuuming workshop for PVC sheet production. Thereafter, Amir Kamand found his new lifelong passion and started to make wax sculpture. He soon replaced wax with wood, as he found wood to be a superior material. His works were first presented in the Second Annual Outsider Art Exhibition in Laleh Gallery (Tehran, YEAR). Since then, Amir Kamand’s works have been featured in a number of group and solo exhibitions, most notably in Palais de Tokyo as part of the summer exhibition “City Prince/sses” in 2019.