Casey Kaplan
Critics’ Picks
Igshaan Adams
Blank Projects
By Sean O’Toole
January 22–February 28, 2015
Last year Igshaan Adams showed a recording of his performance “Please Remember II,” 2013, in which the artist lies prone on a green burial cloth while his father performs an Islamic funeral ritual, at the Paul Klee Center’s annual Summer Academy in Bern, Switzerland. Appearing again in this new exhibition, titled “Parda,” after the veil prescribed by Sharia law for women, the green cloth printed with yellow Koranic verses, “Plate 7,” 2014, is now embroidered with one of psychotherapist Hermann Rorschach’s psycho-diagnostic inkblots, which Adams researched before going to Bern. Part of his 2014 “Neoscope” series, all eight of the exhibition’s wall-hung fabric pieces feature a Rorschach inkblot. The most compelling piece is “Plate 2.5,” 2014, for which Adams, assisted by his mother, a seamstress, created ridged undulations in the fabric by tightening individual threads, forming a vestigial inkblot pattern.
Critics’ Picks
Igshaan Adams
Blank Projects
By Sean O’Toole
January 22–February 28, 2015
Last year Igshaan Adams showed a recording of his performance “Please Remember II,” 2013, in which the artist lies prone on a green burial cloth while his father performs an Islamic funeral ritual, at the Paul Klee Center’s annual Summer Academy in Bern, Switzerland. Appearing again in this new exhibition, titled “Parda,” after the veil prescribed by Sharia law for women, the green cloth printed with yellow Koranic verses, “Plate 7,” 2014, is now embroidered with one of psychotherapist Hermann Rorschach’s psycho-diagnostic inkblots, which Adams researched before going to Bern. Part of his 2014 “Neoscope” series, all eight of the exhibition’s wall-hung fabric pieces feature a Rorschach inkblot. The most compelling piece is “Plate 2.5,” 2014, for which Adams, assisted by his mother, a seamstress, created ridged undulations in the fabric by tightening individual threads, forming a vestigial inkblot pattern.