Amna Asghar “Portals”

Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery

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Klaus Gallery presents its second solo show of paintings by Amna Asghar. In her new works, Asghar appropriates and recontextualizes images to infer portals revealing other realms. Asghar pulls from myriad source materials: popular images from Pakistani media consumed by her parents, American media from her childhood in Michigan, orientalist paintings from the likes of Jean-Léon Gérôme, and photos of skies taken on the her travels between the East Coast and Michigan. Some paintings span multiple canvases, abutting each other like pages from a book where images lace together in overlapping layers. On one canvas, an image of Noor Jehan, a Pakistani celebrity singer, is sourced from YouTube videos previously aired in Pakistan (and often playing in her childhood home). This representation of an iconic persona suggests how digital technology can seem to flatten time and shorten geographical distance. Other paintings feature open skies: some lifted from Gérôme’s oils, some from American cartoons, and some from Asghar’s own photos, presenting the sky as a contemplative space, as well as the grandest of portals, full of unbound possibilities.

Amna Asghar lives in Detroit, Michigan. She holds a BFA from Michigan State University and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her work has been exhibited at Indus Detroit, The NARS Foundation and Hotel Art Pavillion in New York, at Harmony Murphy Gallery in Los Angeles, and VisArts in Rockville Maryland.