Ala Ebtekar

Last updated

Ala Ebtekar
Ala-Ebtekar-Equation-Of-Time.png
Born1978 (age 4445)
Nationality American, Iranian
Known for Painting, Conceptual Art, Collage
Website Ala Ebtekar

Ala Ebtekar (born 1978) is a contemporary artist known primarily for his work in painting, drawing, illumination, and installation. His work frequently orchestrates various orbits and cadences of time, bringing forth sculptural and photographic possibilities of the universe, and time, gazing back at us. [1]

Contents

Ebtekar's recent investigations have created liminal experiences to longer notions of scientific duration beyond human timelines, and explore the phenomenology of light. These projects bring forth sculptural and photographic possibilities of the universe gazing back through endless collapses of time and physical reworking of centuries old processes of image making. Ebtekar's practice extends how our contemporary moments both live together as minuscule and paramount. [2]

Early life and education

Ala Ebtekar grew up in Berkeley and Oakland, California in the San Francisco Bay Area [3] to parents who immigrated to the United States from Iran. [4] [5] Ebtekar is the great nephew of the renowned Iranian poet Hushang Ebtehaj. [6]

He started drawing at an early age, and by his adolescent years he began to focus his energies on music. In 1992, at age 13, he went through DJ training at KALX 90.7 FM, the radio station of the University of California at Berkeley. This experience with music eventually led Ebtekar to the world of graffiti and ultimately back to an interest in visual art. In 1998 he was chosen to participate in a workshop at Zeum Art and Technology Center (now Children's Creativity Museum) with New York–based artist Tim Rollins and K.O.S. (Kids of Survival) to create work for the center's inaugural exhibition. Ebtekar, along with several other young artists from the San Francisco Bay Area, came to form the core unit for a short lived West Coast chapter of KOS. [3] One year later, Ebtekar traveled to Tehran, Iran to visit extended family which led him to return several months later to study art. [7]

Initially studying with a traditional Persian miniature painter, Ebtekar soon discovered the mid-20th Century style of Qahveh-khanehei painting (Iranian coffeehouse painting), and he went on to study under master Qahveh-khanehei painter Mohammad Farahani. [8] A style defined as much by its popularity amongst regular folk as its distance from court arts. In contradistinction to the official court painters of the time, qahveh khanehei painters brought fine art from the exclusive province of those with money and power to the domain of the common people. A singular characteristic of Qahveh-khanehei painting was its freedom, as artists of this style created their work with neither external themes nor the attention to proper anatomy and perspective as seen in miniature paintings. Iranian Coffeehouse painters worked entirely from their imagination and creative ability. It's entirely fitting that Ebtekar found early artistic inspiration from the worlds of graffiti and the modern tradition of Qahveh-khanehei painting, as his work has encompassed comparable populist sensibilities spanning continents, celebrating the stories and lives of heroic everyday people across time. [9]

Education

Following studying traditional painting in Iran with Mohammad Farahani, Ebtekar went on to pursue a formal education in fine arts. In 2002, he received his B.F.A. degree from the San Francisco Art Institute, followed by an M.F.A from Stanford University in 2006. [10] He served as a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Art Practice at the University of California at Berkeley from 2007 to 2008, and has served as visiting faculty in the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University since 2009.

Collections

Exhibitions

Ebtekar's work has been included in over 70 group exhibitions, 5 two-person exhibitions, and 12 solo exhibitions. [24] Significant solo exhibitions include "Elemental" (2004) at Intersection for the Arts (San Francisco, CA); [25] "Ala Ebtekar" (2007) at Gallery Paule Anglim (San Francisco, CA); [24] "1388" (2009) at The Third Line (Dubai, United Arab Emirates); [26] "Indelible Whispers of the Sun" (2010) at Charlie James Gallery (Los Angeles, CA); [27] "Elsewhen" (2012) at The Third Line (Dubai, United Arab Emirates); and "Absent Arrival" (2012) at Gallery Paule Anglim (San Francisco, CA). [28]

Significant group exhibitions include "The 2006 California Biennial" at the Orange County Museum of Art (Newport Beach, CA); [29] travelling exhibition "One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now” (2006–2008), curated by Melissa Chiu, Director and Curator of Contemporary Asian Art at the Asia Society Museum, Karin Higa, Senior Curator of Art at the Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles, and Susette S. Min, Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies and Art History at the University of California, Davis and exhibited at Asia Society and Museum (New York, NY), Blaffer Gallery at University of Houston (Houston, TX), Berkeley Art Museum (Berkeley, CA), Japanese American National Museum (Los Angeles, CA), and Honolulu Academy of Arts (Honolulu, HI); "Bay Area Now 5" (2008) at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco, CA), organized by Kate Eilertsen, Acting Director of Visual Arts and Berin Golonu, Associate Visual Arts Curator; and "The Global Contemporary. Art Worlds after 1989" (2011) at Museum of Contemporary Art (Karlsruhe, Germany), curated by Andrea Buddensieg and Peter Weibel. [30] In May 2005, Ebtekar had a two-person exhibition at Lisa Dent Gallery in San Francisco with artist Jeong-Im Yi.

Art, Social Space and Public Discourse

Envisioned and directed by Ala Ebtekar, "Art, Social Space and Public Discourse" is a three-year[ when? ] Stanford initiative on art that investigates the multiple contexts that shift and define changing ideas of public space. This ongoing critical framework of conversations, newly issued art projects, and exploration of various cultural productions and intellectual traditions looks at recent transformations of civic life. [31]

Recognition

He has been awarded residencies at ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe in Germany, Cité internationale des arts in Paris, Sazmanab in Tehran, Iran, the San Francisco Center for the Book, and 18th Street Art Center in Los Angeles through the Visions from the New California Award, a project of the Alliance of Artist Communities in partnership with the James Irvine Foundation. [32]

The Huffington Post featured and mentioned Ala Ebtekar as one of the "17 Visual Artists You Should Know in 2016". [33]

Related Research Articles

Jess Collins, simply known today as Jess, was an American visual artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barry McGee</span> American painter

Barry McGee is an American artist. He is known for graffiti art, and a pioneer of the Mission School art movement. McGee is known by his monikers: Twist, Ray Fong, Bernon Vernon, and P.Kin.

The Bay Area Figurative Movement was a mid-20th Century art movement made up of a group of artists in the San Francisco Bay Area who abandoned working in the prevailing style of Abstract Expressionism in favor of a return to figuration in painting during the 1950s and onward into the 1960s. Spanning two decades, this art movement is often broken down into three groups, or generations: the First Generation, the Bridge Generation, and the Second Generation.

Salma Arastu is an internationally exhibited woman artist known for her unique global perspective, reflecting her diverse cultural background and experiences. Born in Rajasthan, India, Aratsu pursued her formal education in Fine Arts at Maharaja Sayajirao University in Baroda, India. She was raised in the Sindhi and Hindu traditions and later embraced Islam and moved to the USA in 1986, currently residing in California. As a woman, artist, and mother, Arastu's creative endeavors aim to foster harmony and express the universality of humanity through various art forms, including paintings, sculpture, and poetry. She has also worked extensively with calligraphy and produces greeting cards for the American Muslim community.

David Kenneth Ireland was an American sculptor, conceptual artist and Minimalist architect.

Squeak Carnwath is a contemporary American painter and arts educator. She is a Professor Emerita of Art at University of California, Berkeley.

Brett Reichman is a painter and Professor at the San Francisco Art Institute where he teaches in both the graduate and undergraduate programs. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he has lived and worked in San Francisco since 1984.

Anglim Trimble Gallery, formerly Gallery Paule Anglim, and Anglim Gilbert Gallery, is a contemporary commercial art gallery which is located at Minnesota Street Project, 1275 Minnesota Street, San Francisco, California The gallery was founded by Paule Anglim in the early 1970s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Judith Linhares</span> American painter

Judith Linhares is an American painter, known for her vibrant, expressive figurative and narrative paintings. She came of age and gained recognition in the Bay Area culture of the 1960s and 1970s and has been based in New York City since 1980. Curator Marcia Tucker featured her in the influential New Museum show, "'Bad' Painting" (1978), and in the 1984 Venice Biennale show, "Paradise Lost/Paradise Regained: American Visions of the New Decade." Linhares synthesizes influences including Expressionism, Bay Area Figuration, Mexican modern art and second-wave feminism, in work that flirts with abstraction and balances visionary personal imagery, expressive intensity, and pictorial rigor. Art historian Whitney Chadwick wrote, "Linhares is an artist for whom painting has always mattered as the surest path of synthesizing experience and interior life," her works "emerging as if by magic from an alchemical stew of vivid complementary hues and muted tonalities." Critic John Yau describes her paintings "funny, strange, and disconcerting," while writer Susan Morgan called them "unexpected and indelible" images exploring "an oddly sublime territory where exuberant bliss remains inseparable from ominous danger."

Kim Anno is a Japanese-American abstract painter. Born in Los Angeles, California to Japanese-Polish and Native American-Irish parents, respectively, she studied at San Francisco State University, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1982. She was awarded a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1985 from the San Francisco Art Institute. Anno began working at the California College of the Arts in 1996 as an associate professor, and was chair of the painting department as of 2012.

John Zurier is an abstract painter born in Santa Monica, CA, known for his minimal, near-monochrome paintings. His work has shown across the American West as well as in Europe and Japan. He has worked in Reykjavik, Iceland and Berkeley, Ca.

Travis Collinson is a visual artist whose paintings take elements from photographs and sketches and reinterpret them at larger scale.

Synne T. Bull and Dragan Miletic are two visual artists who work together as a collaborative duo called Bull.Miletic. They are principally known for their video installation artworks and contributions in the fields of media archaeology, new media, and history of film.

Taravat Talepasand is an Iranian-American contemporary artist, activist, and educator. She is known for her interdisciplinary painting practice including drawing, sculpture and installation. As an Iranian-American woman, Talepasand explores the cultural taboos that reflect on gender and political authority. Her approach to representation and figuration reflects the cross-pollination, or lack thereof, in our Western Society. Talepasand previously held the title of the chair of the painting department at San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI). She is a Tenure-Track professor in Art Practice at Portland State University, College of Art + Design.

Tony Labat is a Cuban-born American multimedia artist, installation artist, and professor. He has exhibited internationally, developing a body of work in performance, video, sculpture and installation. Labat's work has dealt with investigations of the body, popular culture, identity, urban relations, politics, and the media.

Gay Outlaw is an American artist working in sculpture, photography and printmaking. She is known for her "rigorous and unexpected explorations of material". She is based in San Francisco, California.

Nancy Genn is an American artist living and working in Berkeley, California known for works in a variety of media, including paintings, bronze sculpture, printmaking, and handmade paper rooted in the Japanese washi paper making tradition. Her work explores geometric abstraction, non-objective form, and calligraphic mark making, and features light, landscape, water, and architecture motifs. She is influenced by her extensive travels, and Asian craft, aesthetics and spiritual traditions.

Christopher Brown, is an American artist and educator. He is known for his paintings and prints, often figurative and feature abstract settings with repeating patterns or shapes. He taught at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1981 to 1994. Brown has also worked as an adjunct professor at the California College of the Arts. Brown's work is associated with Neo‐expressionism.

Katherine Sherwood is an American artist living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area, California who is known for paintings that explore disability, feminism, and healing, and for her teaching and disability rights activism at the Department of Art Practice at the University of California, Berkeley.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dean Byington</span> American visual artist

Dean Byington, is a visual artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is known for large, hyper-detailed mixed-media paintings and paper collages of labyrinthine landscapes and invented universes that serve as settings for enigmatic allegories on nature, culture, time and humanity's effect on the planet. Seamless amalgams of images reworked from diverse sources, including his own stylized drawings, his art evokes fairy tales gone awry, the precision of centuries-old etchings and cartographic detail, and utopian and dystopian science-fiction. In 2017, critic Shana Nys Dambrot wrote, "achieving a profound, operatic feat of scale, density, and clarity … Byington’s surrealism is that of dreams and memories, with an internal logic that unifies Eastern and Western antiquity, the consequences of climate change, the engineering of urban sprawl, and the limited role of culture in making sense of the soul- and soil-crushing weight of all that civilization."

References

  1. "About Ala Ebtekar". alaebtekar.com. Retrieved June 6, 2023.
  2. "Safina, the Final Chapter of Ala Ebtekar's Solo Exhibitions Trilogy". Islamic Arts Magazine.
  3. 1 2 Cynthia Houng (December 18, 2007). "Ala Ebtekar Interview". Archived from the original on May 9, 2013.
  4. "Ala Ebtekar - Magic of Persia". mopcap.com. Retrieved September 19, 2019.
  5. "Q&A with Bay Area Artist Ala Ebtekar". 7x7 Bay Area. July 12, 2013. Retrieved September 19, 2019.
  6. "Bartalos / Ala Ebtekar: The Art of Stepping Through Time" . Retrieved March 16, 2019.
  7. "Elemental - A Solo Exhibition by Ala Ebtekar" . Retrieved September 21, 2019.
  8. ArteEast (April 1, 2007). "Under The Indigo Dome: An Exhibition of work by Amir H Fallah and Ala Ebtekar". ArteEast. Archived from the original on June 16, 2013.
  9. Kevin B. Chen (December 18, 2007). "1388 Exhibition Catalogue" (PDF). The Third Line.[ permanent dead link ]
  10. Jack Fischer (May 1, 2009). "All the Identities He Can Paint". Stanford Magazine.
  11. "Enter the intriguing world of artists' books" . Retrieved February 16, 2023.
  12. "Ala Ebtekar". whitney.org. Retrieved September 19, 2019.
  13. "Grand Hyatt at SFO Public Art | San Francisco International Airport" . Retrieved September 21, 2019.
  14. "Ala Ebtekar" . Retrieved September 21, 2019.
  15. "Crocker Art Museum Acquires Ala Ebtekar's Absent Arrival" . Retrieved September 21, 2019.
  16. "Misappropriations: New Acquisitions". Archived from the original on September 21, 2019.
  17. "BAMPFA Mounts Exclusive Virtual Presentation of New Documentary on the Bay Area Art Scene". April 20, 2021. Retrieved October 8, 2022.
  18. https://art.db.com/deutsche-bank-collection/ . Retrieved February 16, 2023.{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  19. "Ala Ebtekar Biography" . Retrieved October 8, 2022.
  20. "Ala Ebtekar's Thirty-six Views of the Moon" . Retrieved February 16, 2023.
  21. "Ala Ebtekar State of The Art" . Retrieved October 8, 2022.
  22. "Sazmanab ⧚ The Water Department –". Sazmanab ⧚ The Water Department. Retrieved September 19, 2019.
  23. "Ascension – Artist/Maker Ala Ebtekar". allenartcollection.oberlin.edu. Retrieved June 6, 2023.
  24. 1 2 Gallery Paule Anglim (2013). "Artist's Biography" (PDF). Gallery Paule Anglim. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 23, 2013.
  25. Clark Buckner (June 2004). "Elemental". San Francisco Bay Guardian.
  26. "Exhibitions". March 1, 2013. Archived from the original on November 3, 2011.
  27. "Shows @CJG". Charlie James Gallery. December 14, 2023.
  28. "Absent Arrival". Archived from the original on December 20, 2012.
  29. "2006 California Biennial". Archived from the original on May 18, 2013. Retrieved April 22, 2013.
  30. "The Global Contemporary. Art Worlds after 1989" ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art, Karlsruhe, Germany. Web. September 16, 2011.
  31. "About".
  32. "Visions from a New California". Archived from the original on July 19, 2013.
  33. Frank, Priscilla; Brooks, Katherine (December 22, 2015). "17 Visual Artists You Should Know In 2016". HuffPost.