Jason Seife

Seife’s paintings are meticulously crafted simulacrums of his oscillating mental states: different colours correlate to the different moods of the artist as he undertakes the therapeutic process of weaving his emotional state into an encoded tapestry. The inspiration for Seife’s work is based around the notion that we can reinvent the past using modern day materials and compositions, allowing the excellence of an old craft to be admired by a younger generation. Seife was inspired by both his own Middle Eastern heritage and the complex artistic practice of Persian rug weaving. The original designs are laden with hidden meaning and language; the weavers were able to link each rug’s particular pattern, palette, and style with a specific and identifiable geographic area or community.

Seife’s influences span the realms of art, architecture, performance and music. He is a lifelong admirer of KAWS, appreciating his ability to take his creative work into so many outlets, as well as multidisciplinary artists such as Daniel Arsham, Jose Parla, Takashi Murakami, and Kanye West.

“These worn surfaces may also be symbolic of the fragility of history (crumbling civilisations) and a play on infallibility. Concrete, tough and strong, is also fragile and brittle – civilisations succumb to decay in the face of time/history. Structures and fabrics capitulate to the brutality of the industrial/technological onslaught. The works stand as relics: glorious, rigid, fragile, brittle,
accomplished, decaying, violated. The object may appear as though it first belonged somewhere else, a found object, autonomous, before being set on display in the gallery. Its distressed areas appear to withhold history and to stand in for an untold truth. The artist aims to seduce the viewer as witness to the negative spaces, especially as he intentionally contrasts them with smooth painted areas which are fresh, untouched and unaffected by the hands of time.”

Vali Mahlouji