2014
58x43x28
Glazed Ceramic, Ceramic
Probably the artist's most commonly known of the groundbreaking "Readymades", Marcel Duchamp’s iconic “Fountain,” signed “R. Mutt” in 1917, was unveiled during the last period of the 1st World War, a time of global uncertainty and of rapid change. The geopolitical influence of art audemars piguet replica and design, while perhaps not immediately associated with Duchamp’s “Fountain,” cannot be discounted. Within the last decade our contemporary involvements in the Middle East have now subconsciously induced similar influence, as represented by "Persian Spring" (2014), which is essentially made of a common toilet design within the Middle Eastern regions (nicknamed "the squat toilet”), yet, standing on its side, a work intended to invite the most crass of human bodily functions, appears actually traditionally beautiful in a classic Persian turquoise blue. The poetic signature on the lower left is in Farsi, transliterating “R. Mutt” with the date 2014.
In the ever-developing Contemporary Middle Eastern Art world, artists seem to still be adjusting to an acceptance of the revolutionary philosophies of pivotal predecessors such as Marcel Duchamp. I think, besides my work shown here, I have not come across artists or galleries in Dubai or elsewhere who have understood the "readymade" as not only an acceptable art practice, but a valuable one that should be studied in creating a sustainable, modern sense of world identity. "Persian Spring" (2014) examines the current state of Neo-Orientalism - a term I have actually trademarked, as another marker of how commercialism and contemporary art history have also become intertwined - and thus borrows the Western toilet fixture immortalized by Duchamp, and literally turns it on its side into a statement of todays’ continuing development of artistic and intellectual dynamics via the Occidental and Oriental.