Rozbeh Asmani
New Works - May 25 until June 25, 2022

 

In his research, Rozbeh Asmani penetrates ever deeper into the world of colour, image, scent, shape and word marks recognized by the European Patent Office. All the things that are legally granted for exclusive use are astonishing and frightening at the same time. Colours claimed by companies, which Asmani works on in his Colourmarks group of works, have already become deeply imprinted in the collective memory, such as purple for Milka, magenta for Telekom or the Aral blue.

Images deposited in patent documents serve Asmani as models for his works, which are produced using a wide variety of techniques. He frees colours and forms from their legal and economic context. In an art context, they unfold their own beauty and seem like works of Pop Art and Minimal Art. The riddle of which product they refer to is sometimes only solved by the title.

Asmani uses screen printing, offset printing, photogravure and, most recently, an embroidery machine to transform the pictorial marks. The trademark protection also applies to the back pockets of the jeans. With black thread, the protected patterns are embroidered on paper and thus become drawings.

Determining the printing technique is not the only part of Asmani's work. For the works dedicated to the different page layouts of the Financial Times, he procured the original paper of the newspaper after long research and with great negotiating skills. By means of screen printing, the lines of the type area are imprinted. Then the areas marked in colour in the patent documents are painted by hand on the sensitive paper.

For his sculptures dedicated to the shape marks, Asmani has so far used materials such as bronze for Underberg, Brandt Zwieback, Leibniz Keks and nickel silver for Capri Sonne, Tetraeder and Energy Block. For the Haribo Gold Bear, he has used a precious metal, pure gold, for the first time.

The petrol tap, cast in bronze and partially patinated, together with screen prints showing the colour coding of petrol stations or a petrol pump, has currently acquired an explosive relevance in times of rising energy prices.

These and other new works can be discovered in the exhibition.

Works by Asmani have been exhibited at the Jewish Museum Berlin, the Museum Ostwall in Dortmund, the Museum Pfalzgalerie in Kaiserslautern, the Museum für angewandte Kunst in Leipzig and the MAKK in Cologne.

Until 7 August 2022, the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn is showing two billboards by Asmani in the exhibition "Colour as program”, which will be placarded twice a week during opening hours with two of the 72 Colourmarks. An impressive colour change. (Dates on request)

From 8 April to 7 August 2022, the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn will be showing works by Asmani in the exhibition "Colour as program.