January 6, 2024—February 17, 2024 | Reception Saturday, January 6th 5-7PM
James Harris Gallery is pleased to announce our seventh exhibition of Los Angeles photographer Amir Zaki. This will be his first solo exhibition at our new gallery in Dallas. The show is comprised of two bodies of work. Our main exhibition space will focus on his most current series “Nothing to Say (2022)” images of signs and trees. “Empty Vessel (2018)” photographs of skateboard parks will be on display in our second gallery. Together, these images open a discussion of the history and future of not only photography, but also duplicitous version of truth in the modern world. Zaki strives to disrupt common notions of authenticity, monumentality, and documentation through a hybridization of digital techniques. Although all three subjects in Zaki’s photographs appear disparate, they are connected through real and fictive space illuminating the truth between the natural and the ideal; an underlying theme that has persisted throughout his twenty-five-year career.
Amir Zaki
A firm believer in the transformative power of the photographic image, Zaki images are rooted in the history of the medium and uses it to shed light on the means of representation. Over the last 16 years, Zaki has pushed the physicality of the photograph’s two dimensional construct, allowing it to exist on its own and also exploring its own object-ness. In order to capture and record the original site, Zaki’s representations depict the complexity of place in terms of interactive evolving experience, an ongoing ecological intervention. The artist responds to the shifting contemporary landscape where nothing is permanent, constructing his own visual language to illustrate an entire mythology of place.
Amir Zaki lives and works in Southern California. He received his MFA from UCLA in 1999 and has been exhibiting nationally and internationally since graduating. He is a full professor at the University of California at Riverside. His work is included in many museum collections including the Hammer Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, New Museum of Contemporary Art, Orange County Museum of Art, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others.