STATEMENT
Aria's work explores the human psyche's conflicting need for surrender and control. Mystical states, and the sublime in nature, are contrasted with the conscious ego led rational mind, which fight for dominance. The viewer is invited to engage in a visual meditation which foregrounds the ways in which we navigate the world amid the flux of these contrasting, and sometimes contradictory, perceptions. At stake is how our perception can either liberate or imprison us.
The philosophical focus of her work, which contrasts free movement with constraint, is mirrored in her creative process. The abandon of gestural abstract expressionist painting, where the free flow of paint mimes the uncontrollable and unpredictable, is tempered with the intentional and controlled medium of collage. The resulting works oscillate between wild splashes, spills and drips of paint, and the considered placement of collage pieces of deliberate size and intricate texture. Works are mostly in mixed media, combining acrylic paint, oil pastels and watercolour, with various kinds of archival papers. Inspired by women pioneers of the abstract expressionist movement, specifically Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaller and Judith Godwin, her artistic style also reflects elements of lyrical abstraction typical of Paul Jenkins' work, where pigment is encouraged to pool, bloom and roll, creating fluid fields of colour. The addition of collage to Aria's work adds a new dimension, an additional layer of meaning, contrasting spontaneity with deliberation. She has a passionate interest in collecting archival papers from around the world with unique qualities, such as Indian cotton rag paper, Chinese rice paper and Japanese Gifu paper, coupled with an endless curiosity for the diverse ways in which different papers can be manipulated to create unusual textures when combined with pigment.
Elaborating on the free-flow versus constraint focus of her work, re-occuring themes include the juxtaposition of decay and renewal, light and dark, and the masculine and feminine.
BIO
Aria Golestaneh is an abstract expressionist artist of Latvian - Iranian heritage, based in Brighton. A BA in Religious Studies from Kings College London has given her a philosophical outlook, with an interest in freeing up perceptual conformity with altered or mystical states of mind. Her work draws on ideas of lifting veils of perception, influenced by Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception and George Eliot's The Lifted Veil.
Although artistically inclined from a young age, having won every art prize in primary and secondary school, at seventeen she launched Spectro, a fashion accessories design and production business supplying retail outlets including Harrods and Harvey Nichols in London, as well as Patricia Fields in New York. Since university, her creative skills have been applied to interior design, makeup art and graphic design. She now works as a full time artist.
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