Babak Golkar (b. Berkeley, U.S.A., 1977) spent most of his formative years in Tehran until 1996 when he moved to Canada. He obtained a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of British Columbia in 2006 and has exhibited in venues internationally since graduating. Selected solo exhibitions and presentations include The Exchange Project (La Collection Imaginaire), INCA, Seattle, U.S.A. (2016); Of Labour, Of Dirt, Sazmanab, Tehran, Iran (2014); Time To Let Go..., Vancouver Art Gallery: Offsite, Vancouver, Canada (2014); Dialectic of Failure, West Vancouver Museum, West Vancouver, Canada (2013); Parergon, Sharjah Contemporary Art Museum, Sharjah, U.A.E. (2012) and Mechanisms of Distortion, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, U.K. (2012).
Read MoreSelected group exhibitions include Crisis of History - Beyond History, Framer Framed, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2015); Common Grounds, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, Germany (2015); L'avenir, 9th La Biennale de Montréal, Musee d'art Contemporain de Montréal, Canada (2014); and Hajj, le pèlerinage à La Mecque, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, France (2014). Golkar works and resides in Vancouver.
Babak Golkar's statement
Through a variety of forms - including drawing, print, ceramics, sculpture and installation - Babak Golkar's subjects of research have emerged from his interest in spatial analysis in relation to contemporary human conditions. Golkar has generated a practice steeped in the juxtaposition of disparate traditions and by extension, new forms and meanings emerge from re-contextualization.
A driving force behind recent projects has been a contention of perspective. Skewing the asserted certainty of perspective and questioning its formal grounds for reference, as well as subsequent ideological viewpoints, Golkar engages a critical inquiry into cultural and socio-economic systems. Exploring the physical position of the body in relationship to form, physical points of reference and spacial relationships, Golkar subsequently echoes social, cultural, political states of mind in his work.