KAMRAN DIBA - ARTIST

Good News Bad News No News is an exhibition of recent works by Iranian Egyptian artist and architect Kamran Diba. These series of paintings fall under three thematic categories based on recent news events from various international press and broadcasting.

A presentation of recent works by Kamran Diba, whose career has spanned over forty years. Diba started his career in the 1960’s and although influenced by abstract expressionism, Iranian culture and civilization heavily influence his works.

For his solo presentation at Etemad Gallery, Dubai, Diba presented signatory paintings that are abstract replicas of newspapers where news topics are abstracted, colour coded and images are painted in black and white.  A screening of Broadcast News will accompany the exhibition.

Front Page series are abstracted actual newspaper articles; the artist color-codes the topics and paints images in black and white. He then proceeds to date the painting according to the date of daily news source. These paintings represent the history of one day in the life of world news, told by editors of major international newspapers. Concurrent events of one day, sometimes a defining moment, often could be pivotal in triggering a series of future events.

Narratives series consist of a newspaper page designed from several images that have been painted and organized to convey an idea, which promotes personal interpretation. This series address the world of cinema, crime, art, sport and other subjects of interest to the artist.

Diba darkens and subjugates the written words and images but does not totally obscure the writing.

GOOD NEW BAD NEWS NO NEWS video installation is about absurdity or inability of news broadcasting to communicate globally.

The unbearable weight of daily news cascades and intrudes into our private and sometimes modest daily existence. In spite of the economical globalization and the apparent erosion of national sovereignty or boundaries, the frontiers created by language and culture persist, and these socio-psychological territories render global communication unattainable. In these works, treatment of language, the written words and reduction of text by artist to abstraction, he tries to emphasis the primacy of image over text.