Visitors to the 55th International Venice Art Exhibition may remember the "Ornamentation" exhibition dedicated to artists from Azerbaijan. Among them there was also Farid Rasulov with an installation entitled "Carpet Interior", consisting in an entire room covered in a carpet pattern.
Rasulov, who lives and works in Baku, graduated from Azerbaijan State Medical University in 2006. A year later he decided to leave medicine behind and concentrate on contemporary arts, working with different mediums including painting, graphics, animation, sculpture and video installation. Since then he has taken part in various group exhibitions in which he explored further themes that bridge his own background and origins with modern and contemporary moods and anxieties.
The main concept behind "Carpet Interior" is replicated and taken to the next level in an exhibition currently on at the Galerie Rabouan Moussion in Paris. Curated by Azad Asifovich, "Dogs in the Living Room" is the first solo exhibition in France of Rasulov and revolves around the concept of camouflage and confusion. Rasulov presents for this exhibition a series of images of environments covered from floor to ceiling in traditional rug patterns.
As a consequence, the objects become barely visible: figures of animals painted in white dominate the environments, but there is something upsetting and even disturbing about them and at times you seriously wonder if there may be other characters haunting these spaces, maybe hiding behind the patterns or playing some clever visual trick like the Management character would do in the film The Zero Theorem.
There is a lot more behind the total installations in "Dogs in the Living Room" as they are not to be considered as mere decorations, but as reference to craftsmanship and the possibility of merging the East and the West. The traditional motifs of the rugs are indeed interpreted in a dynamic way, and the term motif is interpreted in accordance with the Latin root "motivus", to move, a references to the changes and development Azerbaijan has been going through.
Multiplying and transforming, the patterns of Rasulov's installation trap the viewer's mind, resulting in a sensory experience that can be exciting, but also alienating and claustrophobic.
"Dogs in the Living Room" by Farid Rasulov is at Galerie Rabouan Moussion, 121 rue Vieille du Temple, 75003 Paris, France, until 11th October.
Image credits for this post
All images Courtesy Galerie Rabouan Moussion, Paris, France.
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