Basil Alkazzi Artist in Residence, Kimia Ferdowsi Kline, Solo Show: As Above, So Below

Visit Detroit for this exhibition through June 24

Kimia Ferdowsi Kline, a Basil Alkazzi Artist in Residence, celebrates her five-week residency at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI with a solo show at the Elaine L. Jacob Gallery from April 8 – June 24, 2016. As Above, So Below features fifty-three new paintings and marks the end of Kline’s residency facilitated by NYFA and sponsored by Basil Alkazzi. Kimia is a New York based painter and was a semi-finalist for the Basil H. Alkazzi Award for Excellence, in Painting in 2015. This residency is open to artists working in the medium of painting who are specifically interested in exploring the impact of light on their artistic practice.

Press Release:

“Ferdowsi Kline’s solo exhibition, "As Above, So Below”, takes its inspiration from the ancient Persian book, “Kalila and Dimna”, a collection of interrelated animal fables in verse and prose. These folk-stories are among the most widely known in the world, influencing even the Grimm fairy tales in Europe. The inter-woven fables were written for the benefit of three ignorant princes, in hopes of instructing them on how to win the utmost possible joy from life. Narrated by a pair of jackals, each chapter contains a main story, which contains several stories emboxed within. The stories, in effect, operate like a succession of Russian nesting dolls, one narrative opening onto another, sometimes three or four deep.In this exhibition, Ferdowsi Kline re-imagines these fables, inserting details of her own personal life into the mix. Ultimately each painting reveals itself as a new story–part fact, part fiction, often embracing the liminal space between figuration and abstraction. The complexity of these tales, stories essentially about humanism, continue to have relevance today and engage the intersection between body and mind, reality and fiction.“

About Basil Alkazzi: 

The British artist Basil Alkazzi is a prolific and, in his own words, a “compulsive” painter. His distinguished career as an artist spans almost 50 years. Six monographs of work have been published, which includes The Rites of Spring by Donald Kuspit, Resonant Echoes – The Art of Basil Alkazzi by Dennis Wepman, and An Odyssey of Dreams – A Decade of Paintings 2003-2012 by Donald Kuspit. His work is held in many museums and public collections in the United States and abroad.  In addition to being a gifted painter, Basil Alkazzi is also a generous philanthropist supporting other artists. In 1986, he established The Basil H. Alkazzi Foundation Awards, at the Royal College of Art in London, and where more recently he established, with a major endowment in memorial for his late brother The Ali H. Alkazzi Scholarship Award also in Painting. A cosmopolitan, he has traveled widely for long periods of time, and has lived and exhibited in London and U.S.A. He currently resides in the Principality of Monaco in the South of France. 

For more information on Basil Alkazzi visit his website at www.basilalkazzi.com and learn more about the Basil H. Alkazzi Award for Excellence. 

Click here to find out more about the James Pearson Duffy Department of Art and Art History at Wayne State University and here to seem more of Kimia’s amazing exhibit. 

All images: Kimia Ferdowsi Kline, installation views, 2016.