another Exhibition
Del LaGrace Volcano
another Exhibition
From the Archive
Nejat A., Study on paper, 2024
Remnants are treasure coves. Bits of the past that might suggest how our future could unfold, influencing the importance we place on them. In painting remainders of coffee cups, Nejat A. highlights how his practice of telling fortune means both luck and wealth. Unlike other popular forms of forecasting that require an ornate deck of cards or a crystal ball, coffee reading is mystical precisely because it is ordinary; unique in the fact that is an obvious matter of fact. More than mere amusement for guests, coffee reading is abstract art in its purest sense. Incoherent shapes here culminate into patterns that contain significance about how, what and who we will become and the state of our surroundings. But more than that, coffee reading favors an idea of art that is sometimes lost on us. That creating meaning is an inevitable practice for all, not the entitlement of a few. Fortune is detected even in the smallest of places, whether we acknowledge it or not.
There is grace in how Nejat A. sees an entire world in a grain of coffee– in getting a sense about the future from a past act, and challenging linear perceptions of time as a result. Perhaps in this manner of making something miniscule larger than their total sum, his paintings are spiralling. Looking more like astrological constellations rather than something picked up from the shelf. Cups here are unavoidable gravitational poles that the rest of the background falls into. Here, the surfaces are shaped to emulate the significance of what is foretold. Because drinking coffee requires no instruction, it is somehow predestined, and the responsibility of its reading is shared. This is the case when the coffee cup is on a table, or painted on an exhibition wall. In his artworks, Nejat A. asks us to share that exact responsibility. In creating and valuing the meaning of his paintings, we now become what he intended us to be. We are breaking the accepted boundaries, now becoming both readers as much as we are still being read.
Text by Ido Nahari
Exhibition
24.05. – 16.06.2024
Tue - Sun: 2 - 7pm
Admission free
Opening
23.05.2024
7pm