10 art exhibits to explore this fall
September 22, 2023
Solon Kelleher
There’s plenty of art to look forward to this season, including an exhibit about Isabella Stewart Gardner, the founder of one of Boston’s most renowned cultural institutions, as well as three exhibits with vastly different approaches to portraiture and several exhibits exploring American identity. Many of the works presented in the fall museum programming involve the concepts of character and identity. If what Shakespeare said is true, that the purpose of art is “to hold as ‘twere the mirror up to nature,” Boston’s museums provide many opportunities for visitors to peer into the looking glass.
'Arghavan Khosravi: Black Rain'
Rose Art Museum
Through Oct. 22
As a student, Arghavan Khosravi drew doodles on her Iranian passport. In 2015, she moved to the United States to study as an artist and last year felt inspired by the “Zan. Zendegi. Azadi. (Woman, Life, Freedom)” protests to create the works on display here. She produced large-scale sculptures for this exhibit at the Rose Art Museum, which is one of her first solo shows. For her, “contradiction” is the theme that can be found throughout her artwork, and it’s evident in a number of ways. The pieces blend the real and the fantastic. They combine traditions of Persian art with the focus of the political unrest, of which Khosravi displays an intimate and personal understanding. The way she plays with shape and borders creates the effect where it appears the paintings are jumping off the canvas, perhaps suggesting that the viewer is as much in the realm of the artwork as the sculptures themselves.
