For her second solo exhibition at the gallery Tasha Amini has made a series of new paintings and sculptures.
Pensive women with or without a cigarette. An assortment of bows; on dresses, or ominous abstract hats, and chignons. Faces obscured by blossoms and a head of hair whitening with age are just some of the paintings in Tasha Amini�s show, entitled �Excellent Women�.
Amini uses photography as a starting point for her paintings, realised in a palette of predominantly faint greens and greys. She uses particular techniques; inverting colours, a monochrome or subdued palette, obscuring/leaving out body parts, occluding subject with pattern. These techniques serve to create ambivalence rather than a narrative. They also suggest an unsettled, pensive tone.
The paintings of women are not strict portraits or homages. Compositional elements and details undermine the directness of the paintings sources. The originals are either compelling as photographs in their own right or come from Amini�s archive, and so have a psychological anchor. The process of turning the images into paintings draws out their complexity and mystery.
TASHA AMINI born 1970 lives and works in London.
Selected exhibitions: East International (selectors Matthew Higgs and Marc Camille Chaimowicz) Norwich, 2007, Sunset in Athens II, Vamiali's Athens, 2006, Tasha Amini, Jack Hanley Gallery, Los Angeles and Dying Back, Kate MacGarry, London, 2005.
