Title: Gulf News- Fantastical By Second Nature
Info: By Jyoti Kalsi 4/30/2009
Children love make-believe, losing themselves easily in a world of their imagination.
But adults often lack that creativity and, instead, have to make an effort to make themselves believe. In his latest exhibition, Make It Believe, Amir Fallah gets in touch with the child within him by revisiting childhood memories and recapturing the joy of making up stories.
His colourful, surrealistic paintings present tiny vignettes from real and imaginary narratives, offering witty insights into human emotions, relationships, fears and aspirations.
Fallah uses a variety of materials to create his layered artworks. Besides acrylic, ink and watercolour, he also uses paper cut-outs, images scanned from books and magazines and even pieces from his own earlier paintings.
His tiered, seemingly chaotic compositions combine humour and spontaneity with deliberate structuring, cryptic symbols and philosophical undertones.
The artist uses bright gradient background washes to avoid any reference to the real world.
And his attention to detail can be seen in the flowers built from layers of paper, carefully painted patterns on paper cut-outs and subtle colour highlights on black-and-white photographs. In his earlier work, Fallah has used cacti to represent human beings in his paintings. The plants are a recurring element in this series too.
Memories as inspiration
The artist’s inspirations include childhood memories of make-believe stories, teenage experiences, contemporary events and his mother.
In a painting titled I Put You on a Pedestal, he takes a tongue-in-cheek look at his mother’s habit of decorating her house with bric-a-brac.
“My mother has a lot of figurines, trinkets and other objects displayed all over the house. These have little artistic value but I know they are of great sentimental value to her.
I never liked these objects but always found them interesting. Hence I decided to do this painting comprising still-life studies of fictional objects placed on pedestals,” Fallah says.
“Just like these objects, my works derive their value from the meaning they hold for collectors and art lovers.”
The artist’s sense of humour shines through in a painting titled The Saddest, Saddest, Saddest Love Song.
Here Fallah looks back at his teenage years, when romantic break-ups seemed like the end of the world and sad love songs had a special meaning.
In this painting, the artist has incorporated pictures of all his favourite singers, such as Johnny Cash, Daniel Johnston, Morrissey, Robert Smith and Elliot Smith, to create the saddest love song ever.
The special twist here is that the singers are seen in their youth and in their old age.
“I wanted to make this painting fun. But I also wanted to comment on how, as we get older, these songs from our youth still have a special place in our heart. But the emotions they trigger are not so intense because we understand that despite heartbreaks and disappointments, life goes on,” Fallah says.
In some of the paintings, the artist taps into the horror stories he had heard or made up as a child. In Baby Snatchers, the image of a sinister-looking man holding a baby combined with a dark, dreary setting provides for an exciting story.
“In a magazine, I found this picture of a man covered in blood holding a baby. That triggered my imagination to create a story about an evil person who steals babies.
I set it in a tomb-like atmosphere with skulls and other sinister elements. I hope these images inspire viewers to create their own versions of the story,” he says.
Fallah also presents his take on contemporary events through a painting titled The Hopefuls.
Here he uses news pictures of senior citizens from China during the Beijing Olympics to comment on the aspirations of athletes and the hope of elderly people to go to a better place.
A tribute to mother
The centrepiece of this show is a painting that Fallah has made as a tribute to his mother.
Titled The Ultimate Mom Painting, it is filled with flowers, butterflies, bees, birds and smiley faces in a riot of colours.
“My mother has always been supportive of my work but she wants me to make pretty pictures of flowers. I love her very much and I wanted to create a powerful painting to celebrate her.
I scanned pictures of every type of flower I could find to create this mega-bouquet,” Fallah says. Though the painting seems like a classic still life of flowers, one can see innumerable details in this work.
Every flower is different. Some are created from layers of paper, some are cut-outs from pictures and some have been painted in different shades. Details such as the grains on wood and the thorns on the cacti are painstakingly painted.
Fallah’s eye for detail is such that he has even painted faces on the walls around his paintings to activate the space.
Fallah was born in Iran but has lived in the US since he was 5. Subtle references to his Middle Eastern origin appear in his work in the form of ancient Persian vases but the artist avoids any overt connection.
“Whatever I know about my history I have learnt from books and a course on Islamic art history. I am interested in the subject but I feel distant from that part of my life.
I believe my nationality should not dictate what my work looks like,” he says. But the borders painted around all his works are a contemporary version of the decorative borders used in Persian miniature paintings.
“I incorporated this element into my work because the traditional border is meant to be a window into an alternative universe and the idea fits my invitation into a make-believe world,” he says.
Jyoti Kalsi is a UAE-based art enthusiast. Make It Believe by Amir Fallah is on at The Third Line Gallery, Al Quoz, until May 21.
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