Roksana Pirouzmand’s work considers how our lives and actions extend beyond ourselves and become intertwined with those of others. In this exhibition, she explores these relationships through bodies, water, and material. Two rocking chairs face away from one another across a shared basin of water, connected through a system that carries their movement into the basin. The mechanism allows movement from either chair to create waves that travel across the basin, meeting and disrupting one another across its surface. What begins as an individual movement becomes part of something shared, giving physical form to the ways we influence and are influenced by one another.

This idea of connection continues across the large-scale paintings on steel that surround the installation. Groups of bodies lean against, gather around, and emerge from one another, at times resembling figures and at others becoming part of a larger landscape. Above them, fields of rust create an atmospheric quality. The figures exist as both bodies and vessels, with larger forms containing smaller ones. Their scale moves between the individual and something broader, allowing a single form to suggest multiple people, relationships, or internal states while leaving their meaning open.

Change is also embedded in the making of the work. Pirouzmand uses oxidation as part of the painting process, allowing rust to develop across the steel and become part of the image itself. In the basin, the potential for change is more immediate, held in the relationship between movement and water. Time, erosion, and transformation have long been present in her practice, particularly through her work with clay and other materials that can be shaped, altered, or broken down. Here, those concerns extend into steel and water, giving viewers room to consider the work through their own experiences and relationships.

– Rhys Munro, Residencies and Exhibitions Manager

Read the essay written by Guest Curator Rigoberto Luna