Shahryar Nashat explores the space between the real, tangible object and the incorporeal—be it a sensation, an idea, or a virtual image. His art is never assertive. Neither is this book, published to accompany the artist's new project for MASI Lugano and Istituto Svizzero in Rome. Fashioned as an instructional catalogue, instead of providing a key to interpreting the works, it leads the reader to a state of uncertainty and attraction, becoming an emotional composition. Following the artist's plea to forego thorough rational understanding, the book acquires a rhythm of its own, which goes in and out of the body and amplifies feeling. Nashat inserts his art in the pages of this manual, strips it of its aura, flaunts its nature as an object and describes step-by-step how to create it. Here are 17 chances to get it.
Born 1975 in Tehran, Swiss artist Shahryar Nashat lives and works in Berlin. Whether he truncates Renaissance bronze sculptures through photography, or redesigns a section of the Louvre to accommodate the baroque frescoes of Rubens while filming a well-trained athlete performing a one-armed handstand while looking at the paintings, Nashat's works and exhibitions involve his interest in art collections, art libraries, reproduction of works of art, as well as questions relating to appropriation and artistic reuse, display issues, and apparatus. Lighting, plinths, pedestals, and the mode of projecting and positioning all play pivotal roles in Nashat's video installations, sculpture, etchings, and photographs. Wherever he draws his source or reference material from, he consistently makes a certain artificiality or constructedness obvious in order to generate the possibility of critical reflection about the medium itself.
