Kamran Diba Artist - Recent Work

KAMRAN DIBA - ARTIST

Preview of recent art works by Kamran Diba 2007-2012

Global News Paper & Front Page is a new series of paintings responding to the trends of globalization and communication. This series of works is an attempt to address and go beyond the limitations and constraints of language, a medium which is perceived by the artist as being often "divisive as well as an instrument of segregation".

Artist's statement:
I started the Global News Paper aiming to create a collage of multi-linguistic visuals and narrative-works. The edited sources of news and images came from the international press. The content of the news in these works is of peripheral importance; always borrowed from a host of multi-lingual dailies.

Kamran Diba Art - Global News October 2, 2008
Global News, October 2, 2008, 70 x 50cm, print/paper (edition of 5)

The new series Front Page was started in the beginning of 2009 using the same logo.

Kamran Diba Art - Front Page January 21, 2009

Front Page - A Call to Remake
January 21, 2009
Acrylic on Canvas, 162x124cm

In this series I have gone further and tried to abstract and reductively symbolize each news topic by different, though explicit, color fields.

In reality the discarded newspaper, with a one day life-span, is immortalized and gains a visual permanence, recording a one day "global event".

Hence, this visually recorded news could in time come to crystallize a defining historical moment.
I consider the daily news as the heart beat of human activity on earth, without it the indication of life on the earth seizes to exist.

I have chosen primary colors: yellow, blue and red.

These colors represent respectively topics addressing politics, economy, war & violence which are the mainstay of daily news. This, in fact, is an attempt to create a Mondrianesque reference on each front page.

The other aspect of this work is the black and white rendering of images. The result is dialectic of hard edge abstraction and photo realism, which in fact becomes a vivid testament to the polemics of abstract versus figurative art.

This body of work is initially indebted to work by On Kawara. It was serendipity that I discovered advertising imagery on each front page as a testament to the triumph of the commercial world, demonstrating its ability to stand shoulder to shoulder with the most pressing issues of world events, Hence, an iconic Warholian gesture.

Kamran Diba Art - Front Page March 26, 2009
Front Page - US Official Link, March 26, 2009, Acrylic on Canvas, 162x116cm

Kamran Diba Art - Color is the Message
Color Is the Message, August 29, 2009, Acrylic on Printed Canvas, 38x27cm

Color is the message is a device which is used in color coding the news topics. In the" Front Page" series I have tried to design an apparatus which makes the visual outcome totally dependent on the turning of the world events. This process is always faith full and subservient to the front page layout of the International Herald Tribune, therefore, free from subjective artistic tendencies and interventions. The color is the message is a precisely dated small independent painting which could accompany Front Page.

The narrative paintings consist of a page made up of a series of photos painted and organized to convey an idea and promote personal interpretation. This series address the world of cinema, crime, art, sport, photography and other subjects of interest to me. In this series I darken and subjugate the written words to images but do not totally obscure the writing. The pictures are painted in color in contrast to the black and white images of Front Page."
Narrative-IWonder2010