Until the 5th of January, 2024, the Third Line gallery is holding Duality, a duo show by Iranian-American artist Nima Nabavi and American artist and musician Jason Seife which is a result of their long-standing friendship. The exhibition celebrates the synergy between the two artists, demonstrating the evolution of their artistic connection.
Nabavi and Seife, who both take their cues from geometry, present their latest art pieces (including the one they have created in tandem): engrossing paired paintings. Each pair of the works has the same dimensions. They share enough similarities to see familial relationships from one piece to another, but not enough that they can be called each other’s twin. The titles of each artwork are palindromes, which highlights the themes of commonality and departure.
In the exhibited paintings, a bold hue or shape perceived by Seife transforms into a nuanced layering of tones executed by Nabavi. While both artists maintain structural similarities, the mediums each of them typically employs (Seife’s flat and opaque compositions contrasting with Nabavi’s precise layering of multicoloured ink pens) retain the idiosyncrasies of their styles.
About the artists
Nima Nabavi (b. 1978, Tehran, Iran), who grew up in the UAE, resides in Dubai. He obtained a BS in Business and Entrepreneurship from the University of Southern California (USA) in 1998. In 2005, he graduated from New York University (Stern School of Business, USA) with an MBA.
Nabavi was an independent business owner for 20 years, however, in 2016, he started a career as an artist inspired by the geometric art of his late grandfather. At the core of Nabavi’s practice lies a mathematical approach as well as a contemplative creation of highly detailed geometries.
Apart from heading two solo exhibitions (Visiting at Roswell Museum, New Mexico, USA (2023), and 1,2,3 at The Third Line, Dubai (2018), the artist has taken part in several group shows and art events which include Sharjah Islamic Arts Festival (Museum of Art, Sharjah, UAE, 2022); Ways of Seeing Abstraction – Works from the Deutsche Bank Collection (Palais Populaire, Berlin, Germany, 2021); Crafting Geometry: Abstract Art from South and West Asia (Sotheby’s, New York, USA, 2020); and others. Nabavi’s artworks can be found in private and public collections such as the Deutsche Bank Collection (Berlin, Germany) and the Jameel Arts Centre (Dubai).
Jason Seife (b. 1989, Miami, Florida, USA) freely swaps between art mediums, employing painting, drawing, sculpture, installations, digital animations, and generative art. In his work, Seife focuses on Middle Eastern heritage and culture and explores Persian carpet designs; his art also incorporates the details found in mosques and traditional Islamic art. The artist digitally designs his compositions, in which he mirrors weavers’ practice of associating patterns or colours with particular locations and communities. After that, these intricate patterns are hand-painted onto a concrete slab or canvas.
Seife has been the subject of several solo exhibitions: Coming to Fruition (Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida, USA, 2023); Generascope (ICD Brookfield Place, DIFC, Dubai, 2022); A Small Spark vs a Great Forest (Unit London, UK, 2021); a show at Museo Carlo Bilotti (Rome, Italy, 2021); Nucleus (Sharjah Art Museum, 2018); and Writing on the Walls (Montoro12 Gallery, Brussels, Belgium, 2018). The artist has also participated in group exhibitions held at Unit London, UK), Leila Heller Gallery (Dubai), Hashimoto Contemporary (San Francisco, USA), and Peveto Gallery (Houston, USA), to name a few.
Seife’s artworks have been added to many public and private collections, which include the Fort Wayne Museum of Art (USA), Mosaic Art Foundation (Istanbul, Turkey), Contemporary Art Platform (Kuwait), Tribal Art Foundation (Raipur, India), and others.
To learn more about Duality, please visit the exhibition’s official web page.
You might also be interested in attending Disjunctions by Lubna Chowdhary.
