Andisheh Avini & Iman Raad: The Armory Show 2022

+2 Gallery presents works of Iman Raad (b. 1979, Mashhad, Iran) and Andisheh Avini (b. 1974, Brooklyn, NY) at The Armory Show. Works of these two artists are rife with cross-cultural references, although they tap into and manipulate these references differently. Together, they create a visual symphony that pays tribute to their polyvocal identities. 

Both artists work across a variety of media – drawing, reverse glass and tile painting, embroidery, installation, sculpture, marquetry. What they share is a sense of treading on an elusive tapestry made of cultural threads of motley make. Delicate birds in Iman Raad work appear next to vases and flowers that hint at his native Iran, though the way they are depicted may belong to a different geography altogether. Andisheh Avini's visual landscapes are more identifiable but they have undergone transformations to include the artist's experience of seeing them from/at a distance. At the Armory Show, their visitors will be able to see how varied tributaries can, perhaps, flow into a single stream.

Iman Raad and Andisheh Avini live and work in New York City. Frames of Iman Raad are characterized by a "high key pallet" and marked by repetitions that disturb as they appeal to the viewers' aesthetic sense. Andisheh Avini's work, while faithfully representing a familiar element in (or object from) the Persian culture, deform by distorting and/or bedecking them.