Shahryar Nashat

Ashtray, 2023

3D printed ceramic

6.25 in. (15.87 cm.)

Edition of 10 for each color

In his chimeric multimedia practice, Shahryar Nashat takes up the body as it is distorted, mediated, and remade through technology. This edition, intended for functional use as an ashtray, combines the digital modeling files of multiple existing works by the artist, compressed together with software and kneaded into a new form. Made in Paris, they are rendered in ceramic with a special 3D printer, then fired and glazed. Their latticing and banding lines mark the process of their making. As in much of Nashat’s work, they gesture towards the remnants of living that are meant to disappear—literally holding onto the ashes.

Shahryar Nashat (b. 1975, Geneva) makes sculptures, videos, and other works in which the human body and its representations play a central role. However, this is not merely a matter of visual analysis. Rather, Nashat gets at the very experience of what it means to be a body at a moment when the technologies that filter experience encourage fragmentation and distance. Desire, mortality, fragility, and resilience are among the thematic concerns his work addresses. Nashat pays special attention to framing and pedestals, treating them as integral parts of his work. He also often alters a gallery’s architecture and lighting, allowing his exhibitions to function as fully embodied meditations on art’s ability to reflect the current state of human life. Their prescience and mystery also make them function as windows into an uncertain future. 

Nashat was involved in an exhibition at the Renaissance Society in 2023. 

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