body double

Install_view_body-double_image-courtesytheartistandindigoplusmadder-London-16

Aman_Aheer_Contest_2022_Oil-flashe-and-wool-on-canvas2

Aman-Aheer_Dissolve_2022_Oil-flashe-charcoal-and-wool-on-canvas

Aman_Aheer_Offer_2022_Paper-and-adhesive-on-ungalvanized-steel

Install_view_body-double_image-courtesytheartistandindigoplusmadder-London-18

Aman-Aheer_-Untitled-(rip)_2022_Oil,-acrylic-and-charcoal-on-linen2

Aman-Aheer_Strain_the-red-behind-the-eye_-2022_Oil-flashe-and-wool-on-canvas-

Aman_Aheer_Uneasy-Embrace_2022_Oil-flashe-and-watercolour-on-canvas-2

Aman-Aheer_-Suture-I_2022_Oil-watercolour-and-wool-on-linen-3

Aman-Aheer_Suture-II,-2022,-Oil,-watercolour-and-wool-on-canvas-

Aman-Aheer_Extimacy-I_2022_Extimacy-II_2022_Oil-and-flashe-on-canvas-

Aheer’s work explores connections between illusion, mimicry and everyday violence, to reconsider notions of reality and intimacy. Using a repertoire of symbolism and iconography, the works convey tension, movement and provocation, with great economy, through simplified form, colour and texture.

Throughout the exhibition, Aheer makes use of architectural and bodily vocabularies, using patterns from stone facades, scaled up eye-like forms, prostrating figures, and limbs drawn into hesitant gestures of embrace. Suture II features lozenge-shaped geometric patterns, commonly found in various architectural elements. They are painted to mimic the grain and texture of marble, with veins swirling, rippling and cracking. A length of red cord hangs from either ends of the canvas. While striving for exactitude in the illusion, Aheer also disrupts it by incorporating three-dimensional surface interventions. The cord weaving through the work, seems to be forcefully joining the plane together – alluding to the tension between an original and its copy.

Extimacy I and II feature prostrating figures that mirror each other. They play with the Lacanian concept of extimacy, which collapses distinctions between the exterior world and the most intimate psychological interior world. The paintings explore parameters of subject, body, interpersonal relationships and intimacy. The figures, facing opposite directions, and engaged in a gesture of submission, are drawn from visual languages across religions and produce disquiet and tension. Dissolve, similarly refers to the tension between the interior and exterior, by focusing on the eye motif. It suggests visuality, while also alluding to religious symbology, surveillance, and protective energy.

By bringing together multiple facets of culture, inner personality, personal conflict and lived experience, the exhibition investigates what lies beyond the surface, to present a complex picture of reality and illusion.