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Tulips by the Sea, 2020
von • by Tim Irani

www.timirani.com

Painter Tim Irani presents all the beautiful things that surround

us – house, car, garden – with playful ease in large-format paint-

ings as stylised symbols in bright colours. Working in his

medium, panel painting, the artist, who was born in California

in 1989, illustrates architectural fragments, devotional objects,

animals and flowers in the easily comprehensible aesthetics of

our current, digitally augmented reality. In this way, they become

pseudo-digital signs that are meant to visualise and question our

constant search for things and applications with which to opti-

mise life. The metaverses projected in acrylic on wood no longer

show any obvious difference between handmade, organically

grown and machine-generated entities. They all seem to be vir-

tual accessories in a video game. Irani, who recently earned his

degree in architecture from the University of San Francisco, plans

his works with a combination of analogue and digital sketches,

occasionally fusing traditional painting techniques with sculp-

tural wooden elements to create “structural paintings”. He him-

self describes his work as follows: “I’m both frightened and cap-

tivated by what the future holds and the internal and external ef-

fects of technological biointegration on us. My art serves as an

ongoing observational catalogue documenting the inherent irony
of technology.” That sounds quite serious and yet his paintings,

which are created in a studio in sunny Los Angeles, are actually

a lot of fun! For the criticism of consumerism and fast-paced life

presented with lo-fi effects and neon aesthetics is tongue-in-

cheek, humorous and very refreshing ...