It doesn’t matter if it is painting, sculpture, drawing or photography. They all unravel in time. The work is about temporality and ways to relate to it. A durational temporality that is exposed to light.

Nazafarin Lotfi, papier-mâché and wood, 2015. © Nazafarin Lotfi. Courtesy of the artist.

I am drawn to sculpture as a means for negotiating the space between painting and architecture. I have been interested in painting as a container that could hold everything. But the urgency for a more concrete understanding of my location (where I stand) had introduced architectonic elements to my visual language. The sculptures appeared to contain and to be contained.

The last paintings that I worked on were a series in which I made layers of repetitive marks while centering my body in relationship to the surface. The canvas was laid flat on the floor, and for each layer I aligned myself with one of its sides. I constantly moved around the flat surface adding more layers, and it became a disorienting orbital image. My “unrooted-ness” in front of the painting was translated to the image and this wandering within the frame would translate to the sculptures in the multiple points of entry- or centers.

In the paintings, I worked with the illusion of depth by emphasizing the surface. I reinforced the “lack” that the painting suggested by adding many layers to its empty field. Images could not be identified or recognized because the very possibility of “image-ness” was negated, and in the sculptures this negation is reenacted in the multiplicity of possible viewing angles.

“It doesn't matter if it is painting, sculpture, drawing or photography. They all unravel in time. The work is about temporality and ways to relate to it. A durational temporality that is exposed to light.”

Nazafarin Lotfi, ink and acrylic on canvas, 18 x 18 in, 2014. © Nazafarin Lotfi. Courtesy of the artist.

Working with the ephemeral, discarded, and mundane it was natural to begin working with the air. Although metaphorical, a space for potential was opened up by the emptiness of the air. Capturing the shape of the air (my breath) trapped in the plastic bags reifies the abstraction that I am working with.

It doesn’t matter if it is painting, sculpture, drawing or photography. They all unravel in time. The work is about temporality and ways to relate to it. A durational temporality that is exposed to light.

—Nazafarin Lotfi

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Nazafarin Lotfi is an artist and educator who lives in Chicago. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011 and her BA from the University of Tehran in 2007.

Editor’s Recs

Read: The Thingness of Air, Michelle Grabner on the work of Nazafarin Lotfi at Fernway Gallery, Chicago (2014)

Read: Portrait of the Artist: Nazafarin Lotfi at New Art City (2014)

Watch: Nazafarin Lotfi, Love at Last Sight at Brand New Gallery, Milan (2013)

Watch: Nazafarin Lotfi on her work at Autumn Space Gallery, Chicago (2011)

Visit: http://www.nazafarinlotfi.com