LOS ANGELES — During the Cold War, the CIA secretly bankrolled cultural initiatives promoting Abstract Expressionism as a shining example of American freedom and democracy. Meanwhile, it backed a coup that toppled the democratic government of Iran, artist Farshid Bazmandegan’s home country. These incongruent actions by our government in the mid-20th century form the starting point for Bazmandegan’s solo exhibition, Drifting in Between, at Track 16 Gallery.
The artist focuses on a few key materials: emergency blankets, tar, and steel oil barrels. These materials reference the displacement and human cost of our government’s actions across the globe, as well as the natural resources that drive so much of our foreign policy. Indeed, one of the major reasons for the 1953 coup was to protect British oil interests in Iran.
The flattened steel oil drum in “Untitled” (2022) mimics the proportions and shape of a flag with three horizontal stripes. It’s a darkly humorous commentary on how, in the eyes of some governments, entire countries can be reduced to the resources that can be extracted from them. The surface of the drum is covered with scratches and scuff marks, perhaps symbolizing the human cost of such abstractions or the tarnishing of a nation’s image left in its destructive wake.
“Landscape of Exile” (2024), like many works in this exhibition, starts with a gold-coated emergency blanket that has been adhered to a tar-covered wood panel. Bazmandegan burned parts of the piece, melting the shimmering gold of the blanket so the tar bubbles up to reveal a deep black, painterly surface; other parts of the work have been painted in various blues and reds. If it were just paint on canvas, this work could have easily been made by a midcentury American abstract painter.
These modestly scaled works, which are materially seductive and elegantly made, would do well in a commercial art setting. This only heightens the sense of cognitive dissonance in Bazmandegan’s work. The history of painting is filled with artists who weave together discordant or even contradictory forms, shapes, or colors into a single image. The artist expands this idea beyond formal relationships to include the duplicity of so-called democratic countries acting in service of capitalism’s insatiable appetite for resources.
By intentionally making work like this (two larger, less salable sculptural installations are also in the exhibition), and by connecting the language of Abstract Expressionism with the 1953 coup, Bazmandegan connects the art industry with geopolitics, urging us to examine the ways in which we, individually and collectively in the art industry, might also be implicated in a complicated negotiation of denial and strategic ignorance. (As if to drive this point home, Trump recently announced that he has chosen John Phelan, a major donor to his campaign and a Whitney Museum trustee, as his pick to serve as Secretary of the Navy.)
On my more cynical days I see the art industry as another tool to create and preserve the wealth and legacies of plutocrats. But through my engagement with the arts I’ve also found an intellectually engaging landscape and some truly wonderful people. What is the role of an artist working in a broken industry, entangled and complicit in both beauty and multiple overlapping harmful systems? Bazmandegan’s work offers no answers, but he gives the viewer a space to see and contemplate some of the contradictions that are endemic to contemporary life.
Farshid Bazmandegan: Drifting in Between continues at Track 16 Gallery (1206 Maple Avenue, Suite 100, Fashion District, Los Angeles) through December 21. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
