Shiva Aliabadi

Region: Pacific Coast

City / State: Los Angeles, CA

I experiment with aspects of painting, continually challenging the notion of painting and what it could be. I manipulate the frame (substrate), pigment, and binder of a painting in order to push past their traditional or recognizable boundaries. Often what I call a “canvas” is no longer fabric stretched over a poplar frame, but a honeycomb aluminum bed sitting on the floor, or painters’ plastic extended from a roll on the wall. The pigment itself includes powders and rubbers rather than traditional oil or acrylic.

Many of my pieces include charcoal or pigment powder traces on the floor or wall, or imprints from the installers’ footprints. These traces of process become key elements in the “final” piece, integrating the history of the work’s making into itself.

Even though my work sometimes assimilates structural, three-dimensional elements, I continually use painting language, and I see the work as painting.