For the month of June, Zeitgeist is pleased to present shows by three artists: Richard Feaster, Nazanin Moghbeli, and Kristen Carrara.

Metonymic

Richard Feaster

Statement:

I think of these paintings as part of an ongoing investigation into what a mark can be—how a brushstroke, a line, a smear or a spray can simultaneously reveal the artist’s hand and erase it. I’m interested in that paradox: the gesture that both says I was here and this could be anyone. 
 
This tension between presence and erasure has always been at the heart of painting, especially in the wake of Modernism. I see my work as being in conversation with that history—not to reenact it, but to push into the odd, unstable territory we find ourselves in now, where authenticity, style, and process are constantly questioned and remixed. 
 
I don’t approach the canvas with a plan. I build, destroy, react, obscure, and reveal. I want each painting to feel like it’s caught in motion—like it hasn’t settled into a final form. The goal isn’t perfection or polish, but rather a kind of visual honesty that comes from staying open to change and risk. 
 
If there’s a subject here, it’s the act of painting itself—the physical, mental, and emotional experience of making something that resists easy explanation.

Bio:

Richard Feaster was born in Hagerstown, MD, and attended Birmingham Southern College (BFA), Tulane University (MFA) and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is included in many private and corporate collections. In 2016, he was nominated for a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant. He lives and works in Nashville, TN.

Endless Ocean

Nazanin Moghbeli

Statement:

I use traditional Iranian calligraphy tools to create abstract drawings, a transformation that mirrors my internal dissonance as dual citizen of enemy nations. My work references a deep respect for Iranian art, but its abstract nature rejects the limitations of tradition. My drawings are made with traditional Iranian bamboo “ghalams”, or quills and I borrow carefully studied techniques from Iranian calligraphy to create abstract work. Rather than using these techniques as they were originally used, to create religious objects, I explore the secular meaning of line in and of itself.

The works in this show are based on a poem  written in 1177 CE by the Persian poet Farid al-Din Attar. In this particular moment in history, with tensions high in the middle east and in our own country, this poem asks us to consider subtlety, non-duality, compassion, and openness to mystery. It questions the duality of the sacred and the secular, self and other.

How could I have known this endless sea would be like this—

its vapor rising to the sky, its foam resting on the earth?

The shore of the sea is all unbelief, but the sea itself is full of faith—

yet the pearl of the sea lies beyond both belief and disbelief.

If you possess both the pearl and the sea, you will have them both—

yet neither will truly be yours.

Bio:

Nazanin Moghbeli was born in 1974 in Baltimore, into an Iranian family. When she was 3, her family moved back to Iran, where she lived through the Iran/Iraq war, deposing of the Shah, and the Islamic revolution. These events deeply influenced her evolution as an artist. While living in Iran, Nazanin studied Persian calligraphy, miniature painting, and music. As an adult, she continued her study of Iranian music with prominent masters of Persian traditional music, including Hossein Omoumi, and developed a deep appreciation for the intricate dastgah system of music.

She moved to the United States with her family in 1983, where she pursued dual art and biology degrees at Swarthmore college. Her post-graduate training was at the Maryland Institute of Art and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Public health.

Nazanin creates work at the intersections of seemingly disparate disciplines: drawing, poetry, music, and medicine. Her work is preoccupied with her dual identities as an Iranian and American, artist and physician. It explores the nostalgia, familiar to immigrants from war-torn and post-revolution countries, for a place and time that no longer exists.  As Iran struggles to find its role in a rapidly changing Middle East, Nazanin explores her experience as an immigrant and woman of color, to find her place in American culture.

Arcadia

Kristen Carrara

Statement:

This collection of work serves as an imaginary and physical memory archive. I am interested in combining aspects of my past and present, letting them coexist in a world I have built in harmony. Arcadia represents an idealized, imagined world. These pieces reflect on that impression, and the connection between community, memory, and the natural world. 

Bio:

With a formal background in contemporary dance and a multimedia artist, Kristen Carrara pushes the boundaries of movement and visual storytelling through their multidisciplinary practice. Their work explores the intersections of personal history, imagination, and play, creating dynamic landscapes that bridge the physical and the ethereal.