Triennial of Photography Hamburg BREAKING POINT. June – September 2018

[SHIRANA SHAHBAZI]

Curated by Katja Schroeder

This exhibition will be shown at Kunsthaus Hamburg from 7 June to 26 August 2018.

Shirana Shahbazi, Exhibition view, Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich, Switzerland, 2017
Shirana Shahbazi, Exhibition view, Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich, Switzerland, 2017

In her photography, Shirana Shahbazi avoids any form of digital intervention and produces a very contemporary aesthetic using purely analogue means. When constructing her pictorial spaces, she uses colour to explore the act of seeing. In particular in the abstract photographs staged in the studio, but also in the still life and travel photographs, what is portrayed is not the real subject. Instead, with her photography Shahbazi seeks what enables us to “read” and comprehend an image. She makes it strikingly clear how greatly our perception is always based on a constructed reality in the first place.

In Shahbazi’s exhibitions, the space always plays an important role—both in terms of structure and perception. Coloured wall surfaces are part of varying compositional installations, which constantly accentuate the work in a new way, in relationship to the space. Following on from her abstract colour compositions, the artist plans an extensive site-specific intervention for the exhibition at the Kunsthaus.