Afshin Naghouni

The Great Conflict

2016

Afshin Naghouni works in a larger-than-life scale, zooming in to produce a super-sized canvas in a neo-figurative style that captures the intimate moments in a woman's life. Naghouni's paintings wrestle with controversial and complex issues in relation to women in the West and East, including exploitation, oppression, and perceived liberation.

"The Great Conflict" is a mixed media work painting, combining acrylic, oil and resin to create a multilayered, multidimensional painting. This piece depicts a woman with her hands hovering in front of her body. Water-like swirls of pastel pink and blue paint seem to rush like water over her body, towards the top of the canvas. In this painting, Naghouni blurs the line between representation and abstraction. The nude figure is rendered more traditionally, while swaths of expressionistic gestures interrupt the composition.

Upon closer observation, one can see the many layers within the painting. The artist uses resin in between layers of paint, which makes it seems as though one is looking through many layers of painted glass, bringing a third dimension into this piece.