Amir Nikravan

Amir Nikravan (b.1983, Los Angeles, CA) is an Iranian-Mexican-American artist based in Los Angeles. Form becomes a facade for meaning in Nikravan’s hybrid pieces as he fuses together elements of painting and sculpture. He draws from architectural lineages ranging from the modernist Case Study houses, to the Orientalist public buildings of Edward Durell Stone, and the vernacular styles and finishes of the anonymous—often immigrant—builders of his native Los Angeles. Nikravan presents an ongoing investigation into the legacy of Modernism as he filters Middle Eastern forms through the orientalist lens of Western Modernism. 

Triangulating between disparate coded styles, the artist says his goal is to “challenge dominant formal meaning, destabilizing a hierarchy that prioritizes one mode of form over all others…I aim to engage viewers in a personal reckoning with that which is often experienced as neutral but is actually fraught with content. I am constantly grappling with the fact that the way the built environment looks is steeped in decades of discourse and centuries of practice.” Through his work, Amir Nikravan aims to challenge and unearth the buried contradictions of a typically exclusive canon. 

Nikravan has held previous solo exhibitions at Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York, NY (2020), Vigo, London, UK (2019), Various Small Fires, Los Angeles, CA (2018, 2014); Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York, NY (2017); and Jonathan Viner, London (2015).