The Refuge of Memory 10, 2022

Yari Ostovany  

Yari Ostovany is an American abstract artist of Iranian origins. He has lived in Tehran, Cologne, Los Angeles, San Francisco and in Reno. He is currently based in New York City. He started his artistic studies at the age of 14. At first he was attracted by modern Persian poetry, and then by visual arts. He obtained a Masters Degree in fine arts at the Institute of Art of San Francisco in 1995, a Barchelors degree in fine arts and painting from the same institution and a Barchelors degree in art from the University of Nevada in Reno. He has received numerous awards and grants, including the Sierra Arts Endowment Grant, and has taught at the University of Nevada.

Ostovany is attracted to the alchemical transformation of elements such as light, color, texture and space into compositions which are more than the addition of their disparate parts. Enlightened by a variety of cultures, Ostovany feels close to multiple different but complementary mystic traditions. He uses elements of Western and Eastern art, literature, spirituality, poetry, and music to create an environment and a state of mind suitable for his process, which is linked to abtract expressionism and to colorfield painting.

He creates color field paintings that are richly textured with multiple layers which explore the process of metamorphosis. The paintings that Ostovany creates reveal themselves over time, evolving as layers of pigment are added, washed, covered, scraped, dissolved . At each new phase of the process, the composition becomes deeper and brighter. The ephemeral nature of the layers gets embedded in the visual language of the piece, evoking a sense of movement and of transcendence.

"My work is based on a process of improvisation, straddling the nebulous domain between the mystic and the mysterious which for me is spiritual. I am interested in the point at which the unconscious, the personal and the social meet, and in the energies that arise from the interaction of main contradictory forces- inner and exterior forces- on the surface of the painting."

Yari Ostovany has exhibited his work in numerous solo exhibitions in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Iran, Tajikistan, Italy and Germany. Ostovany's pieces are also part of numerous private collections all around the world, as well as collections at the New Britain Museum and at the American art of Connecticut.