Tamina Amadyar translates her surrounding into abstract landscapes made out of the two central elements of painting: color and shape dominate her works. There, where one color borders, touches or overlaps the other, the observer gets the chance to experience the purity of individual shapes, colored solely by pigment and rabbit-skin glue, as traditionally practiced by Renaissance painters. The borders of the painted forms or shapes of color – in Amadyar’s work these two descriptions are equivalent – create new colors and forms that result in compositions and patterns that at the same time expel harmony and dissonance, balance and instability, calm and tension.
Always starting from an autobiographical inspiration, the Amadyar's work does not cease to go back to her childhood impressions and memories from Afghanistan – the light and colors are captured in images that often oscillate between figuration and abstraction. Tamina Amadyar paints from her memories, both visual and sensorial. Usually she portraits daily situations and landscapes, reduced to simple organic shapes and colors filled that evoke very personal associations. Albeit matt, these colors absorb the light and shine brightly, creating an almost hypnotic experience for the beholder. Amadyar’s work speaks of duality and contrast, of encounter and avoidance, stability and vivacity. Only two colors, “because nothing else is necessary”, explains the young painter who was a student of Tal R at the prestigious Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.
The title of the exhibition refers to the best known astrological constellation that has been an important guidance for all travelers throughout time. In the series of paintings on display, the artist questions and reflects on the human need to always find familiar images and the resemblance to what we know from our individual lives. It is the attempt to understand the inexplicable and, in former times, unreachable of the universe to navigate through the world. Although, the beginnings of Astronomy date back to ancient times, the urge to hold on to images that we can relate to, persists.
Unexpectedly, for a painter, Tamina Amadyar has placed a large paper boat not only in the center of the exhibition space, but also conceptually in the center of her exhibition “The Big Dipper”. It navigates under a sky of of paintings that shine from the inside and guides the viewer, giving him the chance to see in them what he wants to see.
