Born in 1924, Iranian artist Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian has been making art for 70 years. That included a 1950s sojourn to New York, where she befriended Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol. She didn’t come into her own, however, until a 1975 return home, when she visited the Shah Cheragh shrine. Inspired by its mirrored-tiled interior, she began incorporating pieces of mirror into sculptures based on sacred Islamic geometry.
The show begins with several mirrored balls, one of which was traded to Warhol for a Marilyn print. The second floor features works created out of faceted shapes ranging from triangles to decagons. Mounted on walls and floor-hugging platforms, these objects most clearly define her aesthetic. The same goes for a spiraling, motorized stack of mirrored frames that ascend in diminishing order of scale.
These objects and others reveal an artist borrowing from tradition to push the boundaries of geometric art, while pushing herself creatively throughout her extraordinary career.—Paul Laster