Welcome Nima Nabavi (RAiR 2022 - 23)
Nima Nabavi pauses while working on a 6’ x 18’ painting in his RAiR studio.
2021.12.22 (detail), Archival ink on cotton rag paper, 57” x 20”, 2021
2020.05.11 (8.11.11), archival ink on cotton rag paper, 36” x 24”, 2020
Dubai ‘81 (detail), Archival ink on cotton rag paper, 45” x 45”, 2021
Series 8, archival ink on cotton rag paper, 36” x 24” each, 2020
Born in Tehran, Iran in 1978, Nima is a self-taught Iranian-American artist who was raised in the United Arab Emirates. Even though he received his undergraduate and graduate degrees in Business and was an independent business owner for 20 years – he unexpectedly changed paths in 2016 inspired by the geometric art of his late grandfather. He is now based in Dubai, where he dedicates himself to an art practice driven by a mathematical approach and a contemplative execution of intricate geometries.
My work is focused on geometric abstraction and its connection to the natural world, quantum processes and psychedelic phenomena.
My drawings and paintings are heavily layered, grid-driven manifestations of imagined, ordered systems and are greatly inspired by the work of my grandfather who was a geometric artist for over fifty years in Iran. For as long as I knew him, he was always engaged in deep explorations of the underlying source grids from which the infinite tessellations of sacred geometry emerge. His work was more akin to a spiritual and mathematical quest than an artistic practice – as though he was truly trying to decode parts of nature’s algorithm. “The whole universe is in these grids”, he would often tell me.
In 2016, two years after my grandfather passed, I was suddenly struck with an intense curiosity about his work. I started drawing my own grids based on residual memories I had of conversations with him about the rhythms of those linear constructions. Little did I know that I was about to get drawn into the same portal that he had walked into half a century earlier – and see what pulled him in so deep.
Using mainly pens, paint and rulers, I apply repetitive numeric symbolism and thousands of hand-drawn lines and pixels to build complexity out of simple forms. This mathematical approach relies on advanced planning, precise calculations and several, self-developed methodologies to ensure vital dimensional accuracy. The slow and solitary execution of the work is engrossing, meditative and deeply satisfying. I often create work in a series of separate, interconnected pieces that together signify sequential and infinite progressions of color and pattern.
The intention of my practice is to remember, reveal and represent the emergent harmony and inherent beauty that underlies the structure of our shared reality.