Nooshin Rostami, Zamân, 2020 Installation with sculptural elements and light

Nooshin Rostami, ZAMÂN

Between physically shaping light and shining light on an idea I get lost myself

Nooshin Rostami, ZAMÂN, 2020. Installation with sculptural elements and light at EDGE OF LIGHT, The Plaxall Gallery, Long Island City, NY

Zamân is an installation of sculptural elements and moving planes that together draw light and shadows to illustrate a dynamic macro-cosmic landscape.

In 2017, I built a light-laboratory in my studio where I collected and gathered mirrors, glass prisms and objects with reflective or see-through surfaces to study the way they cast shadow or beams of light. The laboratory became my place to reflect, refract and illuminate light while performing processes of emotional reflection, and meditation. In this process, I created a space of cultivating curiosity and close observation, while contemplating on multitudes of perspectives between objects and their mirrored images.

Drawing in the light laboratory means arranging an amalgam of tangible objects and intangible materials to construct new spatial awareness. I call these compositions of light and shadows “light drawings” referring to their two dimensional and often monochromatic nature. In my work, drawing functions as a place of thinking, as a technique to catch the fleeting moment of light moving on a surface, a means of mapping a journey, and an archive for transitory moments of the performance.

Zamân is a light drawing, an abstract narrative of passage of time as a dynamic cosmic scenery. The installation invites you to look far into the distance and imagine an extraterrestrial landscape where the horizon line is like calm waters and the sky is a timelapse of rotating elements of outer space. This transforming light is a mere reflection of physical objects and surfaces sitting on the ground of the gallery activated with two spotlights.

Nooshin Rostami, 2020

Nooshin Rostami is an artist, designer, educator. They landed in New York from Tehran, Iran in 2009 and never made it back. This “flip of a coin” experience of displacement became the essence in Rostami’s exploration of identity, home and place. They work with a glossary of materials and derivative terms: light, shadows, reflections, structures, landscape, space, and place. They refer to these vocabularies within many different contexts both physical and metaphorical, to point to ways of seeing and connecting outside of textual or verbal language.

Rostami received an MFA from Brooklyn College CUNY in NY (2011) and has exhibited, and performed their work in solo and group settings internationally including: California Museum of Photography – UCR ARTS (2019); Jardines de Mexico (2019), BRIC art Media (2019), Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions – LACE (2018), Queens Museum (2018), and Flux Factory (2015). Since 2014 they have participated in residencies both locally and internationally such as Tifa working studios, NARS Foundation, and BRIC Contemporary Art.