B. 1978 (USA)

Ala Ebtekar (B. 1978) is an artist working between San Francisco and Tehran. For a quarter century, he has situated his art practice as a relentless levelling, exploding, and collapsing of time and space to bring steadying attention to the contemporary moment. His work frequently orchestrates various orbits and cadences of time, bringing forth sculptural and photographic possibilities of the universe and time, gazing back at us. This extensive research and making process borrows and physically reworks thousand-year-old image-making traditions up to the latest technological advances in production. In his untitled series for the exhibition, the artist’s continued commitment to folding time and space is expanded through the reintroduction of a book—a compendium of potent knowledge—reimagined as an art object and installation. In his work, the mutability of time is unfolded, echoing the exhibition’s commitment towards a blurring of distinctions and an unraveling of the present.