Kamrooz Aram’s work disrupts the false opposition between ornament and abstraction, and challenges ornament’s relegation to discourses of criminality and excess. In his wide ranging exhibitions, he stages an encounter between the Euro-American avant-garde and non-western forms of abstraction, interrogating the boundaries between art, artifact, and modes of display. His lyrical paintings and arrangements break down the hierarchies of modernist aesthetics, asking that we rethink its categories and re-encounter these ideas and objects anew. Combining painting, sculpture, collage and exhibition design, he creates an interdependence between object and display, revealing the significance of design and architecture in affecting the interpretation of art.


Kamrooz Aram was born in Shiraz, Iran and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, USA. Recent exhibitions include: Elusive Ornament, Peter Blum Gallery, New York; Privacy, an Exhibition, The Arts Club of Chicago; Lives of Forms: Kamrooz Aram and Iman Issa, Z33 House for Contemporary Art, Design and Architecture, Hasselt, Belgium; The New Arabesque, Nature Morte Gallery, New Delhi, India; An Object, A Gesture, A Décor, FLAG Art Foundation, New York; In Memory of the Arabesque, Green Art Gallery, Dubai, UAE; Focus: Kamrooz Aram, The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; Ancient Blue Ornament, The Atlanta Contemporary; Ornament for Indifferent Architecture, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgium.