Kamrooz Aram
Ornament for Indifferent Architecture

Ornament for Indifferent Architecture is the first European museum exhibition of Kamrooz Aram. His varied oeuvre often deals with the complex relationship between modern painting and ornament.

Through the use of a variety of media including painting, collage and sculpture, Aram seeks a renegotiation of the hierarchical values inherent in art history. The viewer is challenged to reconsider the supposedly lesser position of the decorative arts as something inferior to modern art, which is often associated with individualist expression and originality.

Essential to all of Kamrooz Aram’s work is a commitment to the emotional and spiritual experience with contemporary art, something that is often dismissed by academia as leading to subjectivity or sentimentality. This notion is contained in the title of the exhibition Ornament for Indifferent Architecture. The title responds to a statement from the Mexican architect Luis Barragán who aimed for an emotional form of architecture. Kamrooz Aram believes that ornament – and art in general – can have the power to transform trivial or ‘indifferent’ architecture into emotional architecture.