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On view:​

June 27th - July 19th 2025​​​​​

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Opening reception:

Friday June 27th 2025

86 Walker St. Floor 2

New York, NY 10013
 

When rain hits dry earth, rocks and mountains release the primeval scent of petrichor. This soft and earthy odor is a harbinger of spring and growth; of a moment where dust – a matter otherwise overly submissive to the errands of the wind – is laid to rest, heavy with water. From here, the airborne particles are weighed down, slowly congealing into dirt that settles on the ground in a more solid condition.

Artists and brothers Saman and Sasan Oskouei’s most recent body of work develops in a similar span between the lightness of free-floating grains and the formation of imagined terrains. Embodying a series of states from the elusive nature of dust to the solid forms of the earth, their exhibition Terra Forma presents us with slumbering and hazy, desert-like dunes and vibrant red steel structures. They deliver particles and perfect circles partially obscured behind thin veils. The landscape they create here offers no firm ground under our feet. Instead, we witness the gradual formation of caves and cavities, of mountain ranges, sediment layers and sunbaked soil.

According to scientific theory the earth was formed from dust. Made up of material as diverse as dead skin cells, cosmic residue and manmade garbage, dust remains a strange and hybrid phenomenon. The dust grain does not discriminate. It will caress whatever surface it meets on its way. It will change the color and texture of a silver candelabra or a steely kitchen sink alike into fleecy, soft appearances. And it will let light rays penetrate its dancing formations mid-air, revealing itself as a light-handed sculptor of space. But dust does not retain its feathery touch forever. Eventually it is swallowed by the sea or the atmosphere. Or it turns into sediments, which in time will form rocks and mountains. Dust, in other words, carries with it fragments of human memory and cosmic history, which quite literally make up the solid forms of our planet. 

The Oskouei brothers’ mapping of new shapes and landscapes is not restricted to the muted hues of the layers of the earth. They absorb contemporary factoryscapes, whose architectural geometry and steely cold surfaces are embraced by the pulse of nature. But instead of a post-industrial nightmare of cityscapes soaked in digital noise the association between smokestacks and soil results in a quiet series of enigmatic mirages here.

The Danish poet Inger Christensen (1935-2009) dreamt of a city as soft as a body in her collection of poetry titled It from 1969. Mourning a society where the heart has been left in shadow, the softness of a body becomes the redeeming counterimage of a petrified society. Terra Forma runs parallel to this quest for different cities and societies. With their bodies of sand, steel, and dust Saman and Sasan Oskouei imagine what an archeology of the future may dig up from the mess we are living in now. Their statement remains a quiet reminder that the soft bodies of the future will also carry in them the dirt and dust of today. 
 

Signe Havsteen, writer and historian