From The Primitive To The Present

Charlie James Gallery is pleased to present From The Primitive To The Present, the first solo exhibition of Los Angeles-based artist Amir H. Fallah with the gallery.

Fallah began working on this exhibition one year ago by searching through listings of estate sales taking place around Los Angeles. After picking a sale at random, he went on to purchase several objects belonging to a family who had lived in North Hollywood for a generation. Fallah left the sale with diaries, home movies, clothing and other objects chronicling the family’s personal history; he then spent the course of the next year sifting through these fragments of the family’s life, filling in the gaps where necessary, to create a narrative and build portraits of the family members through painting, sculpture and collage.

Fallah presents five large paintings for the show – abstracted portraits of the family members, who are never named and remain anonymous. The canvases have been crafted and in some cases shaped to resemble objects taken from the home. The figures in Fallah’s portraits are faceless, their forms are composed of fabric patterns, objects and details associated with each individual family member. Cast sculptures of personal mementos are exhibited on a large plinth, taking on a fossil-like quality as though excavated. Fallah has also created a collection of collages from old family photographs, using dried oil paint to obscure all recognizable features – the dried oil paint the remnants of the paint used in the portraits of the family members. Working simultaneously as private eye, archeologist and accidental stalker, Fallah creates new narratives that tell universal stories of love, life, and regret.

Concurrent to the exhibition at the gallery, Fallah is exhibiting a project at the 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica running from January 12th thru March 27th. Following the exhibition at Charlie James Gallery, Fallah travels to Overland Park, KS for a site-specific installation at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art.