Iranian artist Salman Khoshroo has created a Wool on Foam portrait series, which is born out of recent trauma and experience in quarantine. By sculpting the wool rovings into slight noses, puckered lips, and flowing hair, Khoshroo has evoked the delicacy and vulnerability humans face in precarious situations. Khoshroo, who is a self-taught painter, has used the wool to make sweeping, expressive gestures similar to that of brushstrokes.
Khoshroo says that the therapeutic process of weaving inanimate fibers into vibrant faces brought him comfort during this time of global uncertainty. “These portraits are delicate and vulnerable and resonate with my own precarious situation,” Khoshroo says that wool works particularity well for portraying hair, bringing a sense of warmth and intimacy to the visages.
Khoshroo’s Portraits are knotty yet fleshy, soft, hinting at conflicting emotions that viewers need to discern amid the convoluted handiwork. These ingrained comparisons are amplified by the depiction of male figures. With a material traditionally associated with feminine attributes, an intentional gesture that is part of his personal journey in re-interpreting the masculine condition.
Although his latest series is much smaller in scale than his previous work, not to mention very different in medium, they share the same figurative abstraction and expressive dynamism. The broad swathes of wool echo the bold strokes of paint which he “sculpts” with a palette knife rather than a brush. “In my paintings”, the artist says, “I am inclined to make sweeping gestures and I find the wool to be a beautifully flowing material”.
The use of wool also attests to the artist’s propensity for experimentation. “My practice involves alternating in different styles and mediums”, he says, “I find different approaches feed each other and every project adds something to the whole”. And with plans to create full volume sculptures in this material, it seems certain that Khoshroo’s practice will keep evolving well beyond the end of the current crisis.
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