Carl Kostyál is delighted to present a new body of work by California-based artist Tim Irani, in his second solo exhibition with the gallery. An exploration into humankind’s interference with and destruction of nature, ‘Controlled Burn’ also pays homage to the sublime, as examined through natural disaster. In the exhibition, Irani offers his voice to topics including climate change, deforestation, consumerism and existentialism.
“With its titillating corolla, like flaming tongues, the iris flower has a rich iconographic history as a symbol of the erotic. It was art historian Linda Nochlin who famously quipped that the iris in Georgia O’Keeffe’s oeuvre worked as a morphological metaphor for the female genitalia. In Tim Irani’s pictures, the iris is as sultry as it is sardonic. The flower represented in ‘Pierced’, with its fat petals and crimson bloom, has become sullied. Right down its middle, someone has stabbed it with a sewing needle, quite like the kind found in numerous showrooms across Savile Row. The juxtaposition of beauty and pain, of innocence and perversion, can be found across all of Irani’s pictures- from the menacing gloved arsonist of ‘Rug Burn’, who discards a lit match onto the jungle floor, to the big cat engulfed in flames, seen in ‘Tiger Inflamed’.
In May 2022, following the periodic wildfires which swept across California, destroying the homes of Irani’s childhood, the artist became fixated on portraying the ramifications of fire. Like in Edward Ruscha’s ‘Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Fire’ (1965–68), Irani looked to everyday scenes and objects and transformed them into scorched terrains, seething with fire and brimstone. In ‘Witness/ Outside, Looking In’, a tiger (perhaps a self-portrait of Irani) mournfully looks onto its habitat, as it is destroyed by fire. As the flames rage on, and the bonsai and flora go up in a blaze, artifice and truth begin to blur; one flower is, in actuality, an automaton toy, its winding key wedged into its stem. Darkly humorous, the picture is multivalent. On one hand, it questions the role of humans in the destruction of our environment, and on the other, it evokes feelings of helplessness and bewilderment when witnessing tragedy or personal loss.
The sculptures of ‘Controlled Burn’ traipse the boundaries of the real and the surreal. The soft sculpture ‘Fire’, made up of three cheeto-red coloured flames, recalls the sculpture of Dutch-Swedish artists Coosje van Bruggen and Claes Oldenburg. Placed in front of Carl Kostyál’s Georgian fireplace, ‘Fire’ conforms to the traditional use of the space while simultaneously defying its utilitarian purpose. It deftly epitomises the core of Irani’s aesthetic: tongue-in-cheek with a dystopian flavour.
Looking at ‘Flaire,’ the candy-like sculpture is dramatic in its artificiality, and is reminiscent of Jeff Koons’ now-canonical ‘Tulips’ from his ‘Celebration’ series (1994). The sculpture highlights the human condition’s growing obsession with the filtered and ultra-enhanced, as well as the desire to manipulate nature to one’s own whim. Cast in bronze with automotive paint, ‘Flaire’ further touches upon consumerism through its use of commercial paints, and subtly references the experimentation and dynamism of post-war American painting, by artists such as Jackson Pollock, who used similar mediums in their work.”
– Gabriel Shelsky
Tim Irani, ‘Controlled Burn’, Press Release
Tim Irani, born in 1989 in Laguna Niguel, CA, currently lives and works in LA. Irani holds a BA in Architecture from the University of San Francisco. Since his first solo exhibition with Carl Kostyál at MARFA INVITATIONAL, in 2022, Irani has exhibited internationally, with solo exhibitions at galleries including Double Q Gallery in Hong Kong, WOAW Gallery in Beijing and later this year, The Hole Gallery in LA. He has also appeared in group exhibitions with Mirus Gallery, Glass Rice and Voss Gallery in San Francisco.