Maryam Hoseini : Yes Sky

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Maryam Hoseini
Yes Sky

September 23 - November 7, 2020*
Extended hours on Wednesday, September 23: 10am - 8pm

Rachel Uffner Gallery is pleased to present Yes Sky, Maryam Hoseini’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, which brings together a collective sphere, a new series of paintings and installations to create an ideological social space that cannot be identified as an existing place. This series of large-scale paintings draws on the artist’s exploration of the tragedy of the human condition through dramatic scenes which find her characters caught in absurd actions and unsettling situations.
 
Continuing her use of figuration as a means to arrive at poetic abstraction, Hoseini’s imagery defies categorization oscillating between genders, both human and animal. This refusal to define her beings within specific bodies is echoed in the format of the paintings themselves, composed of several interlocking shaped wood panels, anchored from behind and set at varying distances off the wall. Conceived of as architectural organisms, they represent a hybrid of different structures and philosophies.
 
The paintings exist in human scale, relating directly to our own bodies, our phenomenological experience with the artwork, and as individuals within our current and collective environment. Hoseini highlights the space between image, object, and viewer and considers ways in which we physically and psychologically adjust to the imposed limitations of architecture, investigating the questions of belonging and exclusion. 
 
The imagery contained within these structures depict moments of chaos which occur at the intersection of hope and reality portrayed with humor and cruelty, taken out of everyday life and placed in uneven circumstances laden with psychosexual undertones. Hoseini examines and reveals dichotomies of togetherness and isolation, and interaction and hiding. Exuding a sense of fear, alienation, and vulnerability, these works ultimately broaden Hoseini’s commentary on the conditions of displacement, identity and love. 

Maryam Hoseini (b. 1988, Tehran, Iran) Hoseini earned a BA from Sooreh Art University in Tehran, Iran and dual MFA degrees from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. The artist has participated in exhibitions at MoMA PS1, NY; Deborah Schamoni, Munich; Green Gallery, Dubai; 56 Henry, NY; The Arts Club, London; Galerie Isa, Mumbai; The Union League Club of Chicago, Chicago; and The Munich Cultural Center at Pasinger Fabrik, Munich, among others. In 2017, Hoseini co-curated the exhibition Other Hours at 601 Artspace, NY. In 2019, Hoseini co-curated She Models for Her as part of the inaugural exhibition, Open Call, at The Shed, NY and participated in an exhibition at Ca' del Duca, curated by Tamara Chalabi and Ruya Maps in Venice, coinciding with the Venice Biennale. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.