Grenade And Carpenter
Amir Kamand
Amir Kamand (born in 1960) has had some professional experiences in
industrial molding and free-cutting metal works for years before he starts his
career in art. His wooden sculptures keep the unique qualities of the raw
materials. Their crudities limit the artist to a specific attitude and handling of
the materials; an attitude in which mistakes are unavoidable and at the same
time empowering the most quintessential characteristic of the artist. The
crudity and primitivity of the wooden sculptures are closer to what he exactly
seeks. In his work, he literally acts like a gold hunter or “Farhad”, The
Mountain Digger. He goes beyond the traditional woodworking technics to
create what he means. Sculpture for him is actually a set of unique feelings
and unrepeatable moments that point out the fleeting sparks of creativity and
free associations.
Despite the human forms and figures in his sculptures, they don’t bring any
specific characters into the mind. The thin layers of colors applied to the face
and body of his sculptures act as skin or clothing. At the same time, Kamand
distances himself from representation and he expresses himself in distorted
proportions with unpredictable and exaggerated structures. The rough and
primitive bodies are born by wounding the wood. In a closer look , they wave
between abstraction and representation. Their unpolished surfaces
emphasize on light, shadow, and texture.
He is a creative artist who is always looking for ideas from his surroundings like
news, literature, day to day life moments, old jokes, and memories. He is
interested in making archetypal figures and legends such as samurais, angels
and wrestlers. His literal takes on poems and axioms to give his works a sense
of humor. In his current exhibition, he portrays an weightlifter with an
innocent face holding a swaying steel bar with an angel sitting on it; it is not
really being obvious that whether she’s helping or holding him down. His
another work in this collection is a semi-alien creature with a hand similar to
T1000- character in Terminator who has posed victoriously; stuck to his head
is a larger upper head with four hands that looks like terminator itself with
green eyes. This merging creature is symbolically happy with its new identity
and respects its creator, Doctor Frankenstein or Amir Kamand.
“The Grenades And Carpenter” is Amir Kamand’s first solo show in Delgosha
Gallery. He has had other exhibitions in Tehran. He has also participated in
Delgosha’s group exhibition “The Bright Side Of Revenge” curated by
Shabahang Tayyari in 2018.