Using simple strips of paper, artist Hadieh Shafie builds these magnificent geometric sculptures filled with intriguing patterns of color. She binds the strips together into scrolls that blend together into interesting and unexpected combinations. Throughout the creation process, Shafie makes purposeful choices about her limited color palette and the placement of scrolls, but she says what interests her most in the process is the “tension between control and spontaneity that emerges at every step.”
Upon completion, each piece stands as a large-scale collective whole that will instantly capture a viewer's attention and encourage a more extensive investigation. As a viewer moves closer, the smaller details are revealed, including hundreds of individual paper layers as well as the repetition of a single, hand-painted Farsi word “eshghe” which, in English, means “love.” Shafie says, “I am drawn to the relationship of parts to the whole, to the interplay of materials, of surface and depth, and the possibilities of tension and movement.”
Shafie was born in Iran and, after studying painting at Pratt Institute in New York, she now lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland. Her work is scheduled to be exhibited at the Kashya Hildebrand gallery in Zurich at the end of this year.
