"WYZ Kami"; From Blurred Faces to the Plains of Iran

"WYZ Kami"; From Blurred Faces to the Plains of Iran. The Gagosian Gallery, one of the largest galleries in London, is currently hosting the works of Kamran Youssefzadeh, known as "WYZ Kami"; gigantic paintings that have garnered critical acclaim. Kami was born in Tehran in 1956, studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, and has lived in New York for decades. Esteemed museums such as the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York have purchased and displayed his works. Kami is known for his portraits, although he also has various abstract paintings. His exhibition in London is dedicated to his latest paintings, which are divided into two sections: portraits and abstract paintings created based on countless small circles. For many years, Kami has painted the faces of people, using family members, friends, and strangers as subjects; paintings that were initially created based on a model sitting in front of the artist and now based on photographs he takes of his models. Kami states that his mother was a portrait painter and that he began drawing portraits from childhood: "For years, I would sit my model in front of me on a chair and draw. First, I would sketch with pencil or charcoal on canvas and then paint with oil colors. Years later, in the mid-1980s, when I immigrated to America, I encountered a very large painting by Andy Warhol of Mao's portrait at the Metropolitan Museum; as well as large portraits by Chuck Close and Alex Katz and other American artists. Gradually, I began to change the size of the heads in my paintings." Kami's portraits have grown larger over the years; today, they are often more than two and a half by one and a half meters, which can only be displayed in a few large galleries like the Gagosian Gallery. Interestingly, these portraits have gradually become more and more blurred over the years. In Kami's earlier paintings, the faces are not blurred, but all of his recent works are. To view these paintings, one must step back and look at them from a distance. The blurriness of these faces gives them a mysterious and spiritual quality that distinguishes Kami's paintings. It seems that each of these faces has stories intertwined with secrets, and the artist searches for them in a calm and introspective manner. Perhaps this is why the blurriness of the faces gives the viewer the opportunity to observe the inner aspects of the painted character. In fact, the artist is narrating dimensions of a person that are lost in a clear and direct gaze; the depth of a personality that is forgotten in everyday life. These faces are often painted with closed eyes. This aspect of the portraits contributes to the spirituality of the paintings and serves the artist's vision. They seem to be in a state of "meditation," and the artist attempts to convey this tranquility to us. The gigantic dimensions allow the artist to experience a kind of meditation while painting; with a brush that can move freely and dance. This time, however, Kami has drawn a profile for the first time. He says this painting is very personal to him: "In my first encounter with this model, I saw her face in profile, and this profile stayed in my mind. This may be the starting point, but I had wanted to paint a profile for years. The profile is challenging because the ears are very prominent in the composition. There is a profile portrait by Cézanne that I admire greatly. Yes, the ears are very visible, but in the way the artist has worked, they resemble a flower." In these paintings, Kami has also paid attention to hands for the first time, perhaps searching for a kind of spirituality in them; hands whose positioning in various religions suggests a kind of faith. In his quest for the tranquility of his characters, Kami arrives at hands that remind us of the dominant and fateful presence of the world in gigantic dimensions. Kami's abstract paintings in this exhibition are created based on light; small white circles that spread from the center to the edges of the canvas and have a specific order; a kind of influence from Rumi and Sufi thought, along with a feeling of the vast plains of Iran that the artist says have remained in his mind since childhood.