Wildflower of a Sailboat
Wildflower of a Sailboat, Aydin Hayri, 2013, Acrylic paint, sand, and found objects on canvas, 40” × 30
I am not at all fond of painting nature. So I thought about an unnatural flower, but with still a flower — it has rounded edges and 5 stripes on its leaves and 5 buds on its flowers. Leaves attach laboriously from their far end, they stretch like sails – with the white stem like the mast of an invisible boat. The background of varying blues with broad brush strikes enhances this marine theme, yet the earth colored framing around it make you wonder the vantage point from which we may be watching this wild flower of a sailboat glide by.
$900.-Strips
Strips…, Aydin Hayri, 2014, paper, acrylic, string, found objects on wood panels, 30″ x 36″
On 3 old shelves, I started an aesthetic assault of applying layers of paper, tape, paint and varnish. For me different strips laid side by side is a reflection of our malleability. Even with no ill-intend, we ask ourselves to recount or describe the same event, we will come up with different versions of the facts. While this may bother some folks but, for me, it is yet another indication of the futility of chasing universal truths and absolutes, every strip ends up being different, although we start with the same intentions.
The board on the left has the inscription “he can see the world clearly because he was excluded from its rites and passages,” a sentence composed by Hilton Als in his review of a Shakespeare play, linking the piece to “seeing.” But what do we exactly see when we look at the Egyptian hieroglyphs embedded in the healing wound that runs through the middle of the middle board? What they represent would be different to us than the ancient Egyptians, I would imagine. The board on the right has two rows of “Plus-Plus,” little plastic pieces shaped as double plus signs (hence the name), an anti-Lego French toy, our ability to make and remake things.
$200 per panel
Union
Union, Aydin Hayri, 2015. Acrylic and buttons on canvas, 24” × 12”
It was inevitable that I would want to do a rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, the flag of my adopted country. What I love about America is that it contains a piece of every other nation, an amalgam of all cultures, and all peoples. It is the starter home for the United States of the World. Hence the diversity among the stars, with buttons, as symbols of unity – are not the buttons the most basic fastener? Buttons were all we had before glues, zippers, and Velcro?
The course of a union, especially one of states, making an analogy to what the Bard said about love, “never runs smooths.” Hence the worn out stripes. Yet the flag is stretched by its own weight – the thread running through the eyelets pulls it tight when hanged.
$900.-