Miniature with Rhus Leaves, 2001
leaves, wax, varnish on paper
20.0
x 20.0
cm
SOLD
Provenance
Sherman Galleries, Sydney
Private collection, Melbourne
Exhibited
'Hossein Valamanesh: Travel Tales', Sherman Galleries, Goodhope, Sydney, 1-24 August 2002
In 2001, Hossein and Angela Valamanesh took up a residency in Stein am Rhein, in Northern Switzerland. Arriving in autumn, Valamanesh collected many beautiful autumn leaves and it is these he used to form this small series of miniatures he exhibited at Sherman Galleries, Sydney in 2002.
In these works, constructed of the rhythms of plant life then brought to the squared format of pictorial convention, such a void of contemplation is opened. Where the flesh of a leaf has fallen away but its crazed stalk remains, it now supports a pattern in flux, and where leaves and petals have been gridded; they shed their logic and find logic anew.
Works such as these three miniatures, describe perfectly the synesthesia at work in the artist's ever-searching mind. Here, Valamanesh skillfully weaves a story of the Bauhaus and its gift of the dot, line and plane to the three dimensions in Western drawing, with a wholly different and fundamentally seismic shift to the dot, line and plane as it exists in Indigenous culture. Where one system can faithfully recreate a universe, the other can embody the universe.