Amjad Faur: Willamette Week

Amjad Faur: Sun Kings
Visual Arts
RICHARD SPEER

In Amjad Faur’s photographic print, Tamam Shud, a black blob of some unknown substance melts like a pile of dissolving slime. In the piece Hollow Chambers, smoke billows in front of a bank of mirrors and gauzy fabric. The images are resolutely surreal, begging for metaphorical interpretations. The charm of Faur’s meticulously staged vignettes lies in their inscrutability—and the fact that he produces the bizarre effects in-camera; there’s no Photoshop in post-production. In the still life Blood Chalice/Flag, clusters of grapes appear to melt, the result of the artist pouring epoxy and gold leaf over the fruit right before taking the picture. And in the rhapsodic print Occultation, a panoply of burning candles, wrapped in twine, seems to float in midair. Like many of the images in this show, it’s menacing, beautiful, and more than a little uncanny. Through Nov. 29.

Where: PDX Contemporary Art
Phone: 222-0063
Address: 925 NW Flanders St.
Website: http://www.pdxcontemporaryart.com/

http://www.wweek.com/portland/event-201731-amjad_faur_sun_kings.html