Solo Show: As Above, So Below
The Basil Alkazzi Detroit Residency I was granted through the New York Foundation for the Arts will culminate this Thursday with my solo exhibition, "As Above, So Below." I will be exhibiting 53 new paintings, including a 30 piece installation, in Wayne State's beautiful, bi-level, Elaine L. Jacob Gallery.
If you're in or around the Detroit area, I hope you'll stop by. The show runs through June 24, 2016.
Press Release:
"Ferdowsi Kline’s solo exhibition, "As Above, So Below", takes its inspiration from the ancient Persian book, “Kalila and Dimna”, a collection of interrelated animal fables in verse and prose. These folk-stories are among the most widely known in the world, influencing even the Grimm fairy tales in Europe. The inter-woven fables were written for the benefit of three ignorant princes, in hopes of instructing them on how to win the utmost possible joy from life. Narrated by a pair of jackals, each chapter contains a main story, which contains several stories emboxed within. The stories, in effect, operate like a succession of Russian nesting dolls, one narrative opening onto another, sometimes three or four deep.In this exhibition, Ferdowsi Kline re-imagines these fables, inserting details of her own personal life into the mix. Ultimately each painting reveals itself as a new story--part fact, part fiction, often embracing the liminal space between figuration and abstraction. The complexity of these tales, stories essentially about humanism, continue to have relevance today and engage the intersection between body and mind, reality and fiction."