de boer (Antwerp) is pleased to present Nothing to Say, the European debut solo exhibition of new photographs by Egyptian American artist Amir Zaki (USA, b. 1974). Zaki has spent the past twenty-five years developing a unique photographic style which critically highlights the beauty of architecture and the landscape. This exhibition features nine color photographs focusing on two subjects: roadside signs and winter trees.
Zaki is drawn to a direct, non-verbal experience of visual art. In Nothing To Say, he digitally removes words and pictures from the signs, revealing their basic form, shape, and color. Photographed against a vibrant sky and given titles like "The Warrior" or "The Shaman," the signs take on a monumental presence and suggest hidden meanings.
The exhibition includes two photographs of winter trees and symbolic portraits of Zaki's extended family. Trees, like many elements in Zaki's work, act as a visual counterpoint to the signs. Zaki has photographed trees for over a decade, finding new ways to explore them with each project. In Nothing to Say, he challenges our perception of scale and place. The trees are shown with trunks, branches, and leaves, but we never see their roots or their surroundings. Together, these works reflect Zaki's ongoing fascination with photography's ability to blur the lines between natural and built environments by flattening space and making scale ambiguous. The true size of these elements is revealed only within the photograph itself.
Amir Zaki (b. 1974) makes photographs of California landscapes and architecture, while re-envisioning the world before him, creating a tension between the functional and the dysfunctional. Zaki has solo exhibitions with de boer, Antwerp; Diane Rosenstein Gallery, Los Angeles; MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles; ACME, Los Angeles; and Edward Cella Gallery, Los Angeles; James Harris Gallery, Dallas & Seattle. Amir Zaki’s photographs were included in The New City: Sub/urbia in Recent Photography at the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; Golden Hour: California Photography from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Vincent Price Art Museum, Something About A Tree (curated by Linda Yablonsky), Flag Art Foundation, NY; and the 2006 California Biennial, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA. His work is in the permanent collection of The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Orange County Museum of Art, and the Henry Art Gallery at University of Washington in Seattle; among others. Born and raised in Beaumont, California, Zaki received his BA from UC Riverside (1996) and MFA from UCLA (1999), he now resides in Huntington Beach, CA.
Artists: Amir Zaki
