Various Small Fires is pleased to be participating in the 2013 Dallas Art Fair with a two-person presentation by Los Angeles-based artists Anna Sew Hoy and Amir Nikravan.
Anna Sew Hoy has created a number of playful works for the Dallas Art Fair that shift the traditional aesthetic object into the realm of the functional. Gold Worms and her rear entry series double as both sculptures and utilitarian objects—places to hang one’s necklaces or key rings. Coupled with these works’ varied textures, they become like pneumatic amoeboid surfaces breathing in and out our tools and accouterments for everyday living.
Anna Sew Hoy (b. 1976 in Auckland, New Zealand, lives and works in Los Angeles) received her MFA in 2008 from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College. Sew Hoy’s work has been exhibited at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Aspen Art Museum; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA); the Asia Society, New York; the Orange County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD); Salon 94, New York; and Greater LA, New York. She has had solo exhibitions at LAXART, Los Angeles; Sikkema, Jenkins & Co., New York; Renwick Gallery, New York; and the San Jose Museum of Art. Sew Hoy has been reviewed on numerous occasions by The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and Artforum.
Amir Nikravan’s flat paintings operate between photographic illusionism and sculptural objecthood. Nikravan’s new 2013 series (Paintings) are the result of sophisticated airbrush techniques that create the optical illusion of volume and texture. These work highlight the crisis of painting, photography. and sculpture in the digital age. Mounted onto flat aluminum panels, the final works become seductive surfaces that engage haptic fantasies while ultimately denying touch.
Amir Nikravan (b. 1983 in Los Angeles, lives and works in Los Angeles) received his MFA from the University of California at Irvine in 2011. His work has been included in group exhibitions in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Berlin, and he has had solo exhibitions at Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Los Angeles, and Pepin Moore, Los Angeles.