Duality - Nima Nabavi and Jason Seife

The Third Line is pleased to announce Duality, featuring new works by artists Nima Nabavi and Jason Seife. Duality is a showing of two artists working together in symbiosis, a product of an enduring "art friendship". In ways both literal and metaphorical, the exhibition is a way of putting pen to paper on developments that were organically occurring when two artists who share a particular way of seeing collide.

Both Nabavi and Seife think in colour, shape, and line. Each pairing of canvases, from Tenet, to Civic, Radar and Level are mixed and matched, but not exact. The strictest aspect of each coupling of works is the precise dimensions of each canvas as being the same, be it classic rectangle or experimental long diamond. Whilst the foundational proportions were shared, both artists agreed upon the works being cousins and not siblings. There is enough of a similarity to begin to draw out a familial relationship from one work to another, but not enough that they become each other’s mirror image. The conceit is therefore more sophisticated: they are the same, but different.

Geometry was the pair’s common ground. Even the works themselves can be seen to be created in parallel: a call and response between Seife and Nabavi’s own particular approaches to how colour and form can be shaped. Even the title of each piece is an extension of these interrelated concepts of commonality and departure. Each work is named with an evocative palindrome shared between pairings. The structure of the letters themselves is even considered from a design approach, envisaged as an extension of the works themselves. Much like the companion pieces, the titular words are the same thing seen from a different perspective.

Up close, the detail is rich and even more complex than either artist had attempted before. There is a subtlety of matching elements in response to one another. There may be a corner of blue, or a hexagon of orange, that at once appears bold as brass to Seife’s eye that becomes a gauzy layering of tones in Nabavi’s execution. Ultimately, they work in very different mediums, and although they may mirror one another structurally, the works retain the tell-tale idiosyncrasies of their maker’s approach. Seife’s work is bold in its flatness and opacity, with pools of pure colour and satisfyingly smooth outlines crafted in a way that is resoundingly painterly. Whereas Nabavi works inward in a process of the repeated layering of lines using multicoloured ink pens in sharp, almost scientific precision. There is room for plenty of tension, perhaps, in these juxtapositions, but in keeping each work’s independence they avoid direct conflict. Working in tandem like this is hugely revealing. It entails a tangible sense of mutual respect and the deep knowing of someone else which extends, at its most intimate, into the anticipation of their next move. What results is a symbiosis that becomes a pas de deux.

- Text by Dr Natasha Morris