Panteha Abareshi
February 4 — April 22, 2021

Panteha Abareshi, New Artifacts, 2021. image courtesy of the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. photo: Jeff McLane.

The City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA) and the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (LAMAG) presented a series of four solo exhibitions featuring newly commissioned work by Los Angeles artists Panteha Abareshi, Alexandre Dorriz, Tristan Espinoza, and Maru Garcia. These series of exhibitions reimagined the role of the gallery experience for our current times by presenting research-based artists outside of the white box.

 

Panteha Abareshi’s exhibition, Tender Calamities, showcased two new films that premiered online along with a sculptural installation, all of which examined the tensions between the impermanence of the human body, and the intimate objects (both biological and synthetic) our bodies leave behind after it ceases to function. Their work plays with the idea of prosthetics as a mechanized object fulfilling malfunction and void in our bodies to go back to what is perceived to be normal, including an exploration of how these prosthetics exist as objects and ideas beyond their function. Abareshi’s work complicates traditional notions of memento mori by how these objects reconsider the frequently otherized body that is diseased and malfunctioning, rather than viewing this natural phenomenon as a normal, inevitable function of life.

 

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Panteha Abareshi, "Methods of Care for the Precarious Body" (video still), 2020. image courtesy of the artist.
Panteha Abareshi, "Methods of Care for the Precarious Body" (video still), 2020. image courtesy of the artist.
Panteha Abareshi, "Unlearn the Body" (video still), 2020. image courtesy of the artist.
Panteha Abareshi, "Unlearn the Body" (video still), 2020. image courtesy of the artist.
Panteha Abareshi, "Aggregation", 2021. image courtesy of the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. photo: Jeff McClane.
Panteha Abareshi, "Aggregation", 2021. image courtesy of the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. photo: Jeff McClane.
Panteha Abareshi, "Aggregation" detail, 2021. image courtesy of the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. photo: Jeff McClane.
Panteha Abareshi, "Aggregation" detail, 2021. image courtesy of the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. photo: Jeff McClane.
Panteha Abareshi, "New Artifacts", 2021. image courtesy of the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. photo: Jeff McClane.
Panteha Abareshi, "New Artifacts", 2021. image courtesy of the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. photo: Jeff McClane.
Panteha Abareshi, "New Artifacts", 2021. image courtesy of the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. photo: Jeff McClane.
Panteha Abareshi, "New Artifacts", 2021. image courtesy of the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. photo: Jeff McClane.

Panteha Abareshi [b. 1999, Montreal, Canada (they/them)] completed their BFA at the University of Southern California’s Roski School of Art and Design. Abareshi has performed and exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art Los Angeles; Human Resources, Los Angeles; and the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, among others.