2007
Night Visions and Revolutionary Dreams
February 16 - March 17, 2007
Oliver Kamm/5BE Gallery, New York, NY
Excerpt from press release:
Night Visions refers to military night vision, the grainy, high-contrast, green images of war found in the media, as well as biblical night visions, hallucinatory dreams often involving some kind of revelation. Revolutionary Dreams is the title for a series of drawings that explore the romanticization of revolutionary ideologies.
In the paintings, Aram continues his investigation of the relationships between violence, mysticism and nationalism. These works explore the way in which icons and mythologies are used to romanticize such subjects in politics and culture. These works challenge the viewer with nationalistic symbols such as the hawk, a circle of stars, a flag, as well as religious symbols such as angels and mystical bursts of light, which double as explosions. Combined, these images lose their meanings to a quasi-narrative where the viewer is left to sort through a hallucination in an uncertain place between destruction and celebration.
The drawings in the exhibition are from the series Revolutionary Dreams, which takes its title from a song by Reggae musician Pablo Moses, in which the Rastafarian singer recollects a dream of a romanticized revolutionary battle. Aram finds the song striking because, "it exemplifies the utter idealization of violence by someone who is not actively or directly engaged with violence." The drawings attempt to mimic the flawless craft of traditional art forms and always come short of perfection, but not without creating their own humble spectacle. Likewise, the figures depicted in the drawings often come short of achieving their revolutionary dreams.
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