Ali Dadgar: Additions | Redactions

Opening reception, January 10, 2020. 6-8PM

Forthcoming Redaction Painting Workshop TBD

Additions | Redactions  represents the dynamism of Oakland-based artist Ali Dadgar’s studio practice, which includes large-scale paintings that are worked and re-worked tirelessly, small pieces produced as daily meditations on the way information and media is distributed and discarded, as well as other material experimentations. In Dadgar’s studio, every surface is fair game: a synthetic Persian rug is unwoven, painted on, and screen printed, and piles of newspapers, maps, and encyclopedia pages are edited with paint, their original meanings redacted to reveal remnants of an untold truth. Richly layered paintings might include aerosol pigments, textile print impressions, and screen-printed portraits, images sourced from personal photographs and cultural ephemera that collide and combine on the canvas.  Holding a belief that “nothing is precious”, his pieces are well-attended surfaces layered with thick smears of paint, scratched through and painted over again. This process of addition and redaction, of experimentation and improvisation, creates a dialogue between past and present identities, drawing on visual elements from both his Iranian heritage and the current socio-political climate.