Jean Pierre Khazem’s solo shows include Goss Gallery, Dallas (2006), Sperone Westwater, New York (2005), The Rubell Family Collection, Miami, USA, (2003) Deitch Projects, NewYork (2003), Centre National de la Photographie, Paris (2003), Färgfabriken, Stockholm (2002) and Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris (1998). He has participated in numerous group shows across Europe and Japan.
Khazem’s work is a complex and mesmerising interplay between sculpture, photography and performance. Regardless of whether the work involves a live audience or not, in an important sense his models are always performers, the photographs serving simply to capture their performances.
The face, the nexus of our non-verbal and unconscious communication, betrays all but the greatest actors. In striving to overcome the inherent pretense of performance and reach a deeper truth, masks have become an indispensable device in Khazem’s work. The masks extend the artist’s control of the situation, supplanting his performers’ identities with his own creations, yet providing them greater freedom and impetus to perform beyond their boundaries.
His masks range from the photo-realistic to the fantastic, from the sublime to the ridiculous. Paradoxically, it is the realistic masks that appear the most lifeless, and the fantastic ones that are most expressive, which perhaps points towards our love of the abstract and graphic in art, and our love affair with cartoons. In his studies of female nudes, he gives his models masks reminiscent of wax dolls which, combined with passive and stilted poses, serve to dehumanize, reminding us that the flesh is simply a transient vehicle - either for the soul or DNA, depending on your point of view. And yet conversely, in live performance, the masks enhance the sense of energy and vitality in its wearer.
