We've been following Hassan Rahim for a few years now, and he keeps impressing with his design and art work. His second solo show in L.A. opens tonight and you should check it out-- if you recognize his iconography, which is loosely based in hip-hop, you'll appreciate his deep, subtle, and subversive take. We may all seeing the same things, and listening to the same music, but we're all aliens and nothing is really what it seems. Full press release below.
In his second solo exhibition Distillations, Hassan Rahim applies his visual dialogue to deeper negotiate iconicity and nostalgia as constructions of the personal and universal subconscious. Using episodes from his past as a conceptual framework, futuristic fighter planes and vignettes from Los Angeles’s seedy history are re-contextualized in a spectral grammar of poetry and violence.
With Rauschenberg’s collage semantics, Stella’s defiance of the canvas, and Ruscha’s typographical sensibilities, Rahim’s obsessions are lacquered under layers of worship, kink, machinery, and analog static.
Hassan Rahim, b. 1987, Los Angeles, is an artist and art director. His work, reminiscent of vague childhood memories and adolescent fantasies, utilizes photography, collage and mixed media to create strong contextual pieces which are both appealing and alarming to the audience. This is his second solo exhibition at HVW8 Art + Design Gallery; he has previously exhibited in Milan and Amsterdam.
