ART-PRESENTATION: Pouran Jinchi-The Line of March
Like many children of her generation growing up in Iran, Pouran Jinchi learned the ancient art of Persian calligraphy in school. Unlike most children of her generation, when she moved to the United States, she did not leave that education behind. After receiving a degree in civil engineering from George Washington University, Jinchi broke from familial expectations to pursue studies in art at UCLA and the Art Students League of New York.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Third Line Gallery Archive
Pouran Jinchi in her solo exhibition “The Line of March” presents her new body of work that returns to a fundamental preoccupation, the parallels between art and language as modes of communication, while extending her artistic expression in new directions. The artist quietly inventories the unspoken traces of endless wars, perpetual conflict, and pervasive militarism. For months, she has been pouring over documents on the visual apparatus of military power, noting the discreet ways these tonalities seep into culture. From Morse code and phonetic alphabets to military insignia and medals, from war paint to camouflage, Pouran takes stock of a pervasive military aesthetic. Her research extends to the ways military jargon permeates our common language, jotting notes in her notebooks – deployed, regimented, cypher, war of words, occupied. All of it becomes source material for her artworks. The title of the exhibition is borrowed from a painting by the 18th Century French artist Jean-Antoine Watteau, who depicted the lives of common soldiers in times of war. Pouran studied photographs of the German city of Koblenz, where architectural fragments that remain from the destruction of WWII have been integrated into modern architecture. She unearthed a black and white photograph from 1920s Leningrad showing Soviet chess masters playing the game on a massive chessboard at the Palace Square using soldiers from the Red Army as the black pieces and sailors from the navy for the white pieces. Pouran’s new art takes shape through this dynamic synergy between her perpetual research on a given subject and her unconventional use of materials, her play on color. In all of Pouran’s work, color has meaning. For each new series, she creates an original palette. The tones of this exhibition come from battleground camouflage, the stripes of military ribbons, and the coded shades of naval flags. As she incorporates new forms into her practice, Pouran’s art traverses new territories. Her work gravitates between gesture and geometry. The calligraphic line evolves into a geometric grid, the linear into abstract structural form. Concept merges with form, and as a whole the exhibition becomes an intervention on the architecture of language.
Info: Third Line Gallery, Warehouse 78 & 80, (Exit 43 off Sheikh Zayed Road), Street 8, Al Quoz 1, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, Duration: 13/9-31/10/17, Days & Hours: Sat-Thu 10:00-19:00, www.thethirdline.com
