Note: the following is part of Glasstire’s series of short videos, Five-Minute Tours, for which commercial galleries, museums, nonprofits and artist-run spaces across the state of Texas send us video walk-throughs of their current exhibitions. This will continue while the coronavirus situation hinders public access to exhibitions. Let’s get your show in front of an audience.
See other Five-Minute Tours here.
Avisheh Mohsenin: Playing Fields at Heidi Vaughan Fine Art, Houston. Dates: April 10 – May 15, 2021.
Via the gallery:
“HEIDI VAUGHAN FINE ART is proud to present Playing Fields, a collection of constructed and collaged photography by the artist Avisheh Mohsenin. The exhibition opens April 10th from 11am until 6pm, and runs through May 15, 2021 at the gallery, located at 3510 Lake Street in the Upper Kirby Galleries. An artist talk will take place on May 1, at 1 pm.
“The objects in Playing Fields comprise photographic compositions constructed with children’s items, and photocollages from images of playground slides. In one set, Mohsenin works in a more cerebral and calculated way. In the other, she lets loose and welcomes accidents in a seesaw not dissimilar to the constant quest for balance in parenthood.
“In the Spring of 2020, with lockdowns in place, Mohsenin found herself juggling work and parenthood. On their walks with her then one-and-a-half year-old daughter, she noticed that leaves and fallen petals of magnolia trees suddenly looked very different. On these daily walks, while worrying about the next task at hand, the natural elements in their changing colors and ephemerality became necessary companions to appease the uncertainty of the times. The artist recorded them to make images that would later serve as permanent reminders of the subtleties experienced in the mundane.
“In Playing Fields, Mohsenin is motivated by the challenge of exploring light, color, and space in a more constricted scale reflecting on her recent experience with motherhood and a child’s world, especially during the Pandemic. Sourcing her art making material from surroundings where she spends most of her time with her toddler, she uses items such as a night lamp, stacking blocks, balloons, and dollhouse furniture to create intangible spaces and compositions that contain a depth of process and visuals.
“By appropriating these elements and further rendering them into works that are more than just dollhouse chairs or slides, Mohsenin finds a vessel to reduce the effects of the mundane and the redundancy of tasks embedded in parenting. By inserting herself into the complex equation of child-parent-time-exploration-growth, she becomes a player, too, where the play no longer functions only for her child, but for her as well. Mohsenin’s works in this series are dedicated to the artist’s daughter, Saman Naraghi, who is the artist’s muse for this body of work.”
