Amir Zaki: Getting Lost

Edward Cella Art & Architecture presents an exhibition of new works by Amir Zaki. This is the artist’s first solo project with the gallery and features three works from his newest series Getting Lost (2017). Using “hybrid photography,” or a combination of digital and analog technologies, Zaki transforms his images in color, form, and atmosphere into striking large-format compositions.

In Getting Lost, Zaki pairs trees in a series of nocturnes, illuminated in conversation with one another against the night sky. The works in the series were made by using a Gigapan machine, which allows the artist to stitch together multiple photographic images. The resulting compositions, each comprised of 15 to 30 images, are meticulously printed by the artist and offer the viewer far more detail than the naked eye can see. Zaki’s methods, which bridge early long-exposure photographic techniques and digital technologies, create works that he explains “appear to be wholly instantaneous, yet reveal subtle clues regarding their extended temporality.”

Based in Los Angeles, Amir Zaki explores the urban landscape across a range of media including photography, sound, and video. Reflecting his ongoing interest in the rhetoric of authenticity as it relates to photography as indexical medium, Zaki uses the transformative potential of digital technology to disrupt that presumed authenticity. In an interview the artist states: “My intention is not to fool the viewer, but to present assertions that lead to questions about the nature of the veracity of the images I’m presenting.” By rendering visible these otherwise concealed night scenes, Zaki invites the viewer to reconsider elements of our surrounding landscape we tend to pass with little consideration.