Currently on show at Galerie Pangée is the exhibition Medium Dreamers featuring works by Ukarainian artist Anna Pahlavi. Pahlavi is a versatile artist who incorporates the mediums of photography, painting and drawing to convey deeply buried emotions.

In her collection of drawings the artist has created a series of images using ink on paper. Surrounding the drawing is a web of cotton fiber interlaced with pins, forming a loose circle. The recurring motif in these works is a female figure with an elongated, blackened face. It looks as though the soul of the woman is being sucked out by another mysterious figure. The string and the pins have their part to play in this drama as the lights of the gallery create a shadow play on the paper, forming a three-dimensional effect that draws the viewer into a vortex that surrounds these shadowy figures.

Next to the drawings are a set of six daguerreotypes mounted on hand welded oxidized steel with copper framing. Each piece has a distinctive phrasing which is open to interpretation by the viewer..

On an adjacent wall is Pahlavi’s work titled Nudes, which is a collection of eighteen black and white photographic prints featuring the female form. The images are saturated and highly contrasted. The feeling is lush and the subjects are frozen into position. To create this effect, Pahlavi took a series of photographs of original prints and repeated the process until the edges of every image had turned into an indistinguishable blur. This technique in essence blurs the lines between what is reality and the solitary world that is inhabited by these lovely figures.

Pahlavi is quoted as saying that with work her goal was to move people in a way they would not forget. This show accomplished exactly that by briefly stepping into an illusory world created by the artist.

Galerie Pangée, space 412
Anna Pahlavi
Medium Dreamers
May 3 – June 16, 2013
www.galeriepangee.com