A mood of musing remembrance pervades “Rearranging My Furniture,” Farnaz Shadravan‘s show presenting sculptural reconfigurations of household items. In Shadravan’s hands, parts of once-utilitarian objects such as chairs and doors become meditative totems of hopefulness. Works from several different series all seem part of her larger personal quest to find peace or meaning within unfamiliar situations. The Iran-born, Bay Area based artist was trained as a Koran manuscript illuminator and currently works as a dentist. In her “Dürer Bathtubs” lined up as solemn monuments in Tag Gallery‘s expansive window, Shadravan used her dental drill to engrave ornate vignettes, after Albrecht Dürer’s “Apocalypse,” into old bathtubs in commemoration of hardships faced by Afghan refugee children she had once met in Tehran. Another body of work features refrigerator doors dotted with symbolic magnets and carved with Christian imagery. A note affixed to one alludes to her looking to Christian religious iconography as a way to reconnect with her own Muslim faith, which she lost after moving to the U.S. Imbued with less literal spirituality than those earlier works, her most interesting series is that for which her show is titled. To cope with sadness at the termination of a 10-year relationship, she began deconstructing, and imaginatively refashioning furnishings she had once shared with her partner. Works such as Common Cross (2017) and Things That Break at Night (no date given, pictured above) strike affecting balances between delicacy and bulkiness, deterioration and decoration. You can almost feel Shadravan finding catharsis in the salvage of household wreckage.

Tag Gallery
5458 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
Show runs through Feb. 16