Fragments of a Future Past

Amir Tomashov:

Fragments of Future Past

Curator: Hadas Glazer

In the realm that stretches between destruction, memory, and place, Amir Tomashov collects remnants. Discarded objects, old pictures, and trash become material evidence of social and political processes – of what used to be and what is yet to come.

In Fragments of Future Past, Tomashov presents several series that add up to what we may call “an index” of a dystopian future: In his work, the disaster is perceived as a cyclical process, reflected in buildings and sites that have been radically transformed through acts of destruction and construction. His aesthetic style, characterized by perceptive and precise realist drawing, offers a critical look at the costs of globalization, gentrification, and the climate crisis through an architectural lens.

Tomashov’s practice is serial in nature, and he tends to work on several ongoing series over many years, adding new works each year. This exhibition features works from five series, including two new ones that are distinct in their aesthetic and shift away from his recognizable clinical, architectural, and meticulous style.

The exhibition is based on two guiding principles: the use of found objects as the painting support – charged materials imbued with their own history and character; and the use of generic images culled from social media like Instagram and Pinterest, stock photos, and mass-produced paintings.

In the series Reforgotten, Tomashov works on old oil paintings and tapestries depicting landscapes, portraits, and still life – artworks-souvenirs, probably sold in city squares and tourist shops, likely of Chinese origin. He appropriates these paintings, erasing and redrawing them, embedding heaps of garbage, rubble, and debris at the heart of the image. His work subverts the kitschy narrative into a dystopian prophecy, introducing questions about artistic value, appropriation, and consumer culture.

The series Still Waiting focuses on portrait drawings based on stock photos – generic, staged images devoid of any authentic emotion. These works mark a shift in his work from architectural representation to the representation of trauma through human eyes. The drawings were made on plywood and boards, and the holes and grooves on their surface seem to rupture and pierce the image. These surfaces convey the tension between the generic beauty ideal and the pain and roughness that simmer beneath, alongside the realization that the gaze has opened towards a dark future.

In other works in the exhibition, which are a part of his older ongoing series, Tomashov paints on logs of wood, book covers, and old drawers. These pieces demonstrate lateral thinking that brings to mind archaeological excavations, examining the skeleton of buildings in the aftermath of dramatic destruction and transformation.

Tomashov’s critical lens, both seductive and sober, defies contemporary culture. Combining meticulous craftsmanship, generic aesthetics, and a dark vision, he highlights the disparities between the glossy beauty we consume and the reality that remains hidden – piles of trash, devastation, and the fragments of consumer culture. Tomashov dismantles and reassembles, asking how the urge to beautify and conceal exacerbates the crisis and threatens our future. His works do not offer answers to these questions, but rather foreground the consequences of our choices as a society, wishing to reevaluate our morals ??in light of the images we produce and consume.