Border
Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago,. IL
April 10 – May 30, 2026
ANDREW RAFACZ is thrilled to announce Border, a solo exhibition of new works on paper and ceramics from Abdolreza Aminlari, in Gallery One. The exhibition opens Friday, April 10th and continues through Saturday, May 30th, 2026. This is the artist’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery.
In Border, New York-based Abdolreza Aminlari presents a new suite of sewn thread-on-paper works, as well as freestanding stoneware objects. Furthering his practice of creating elaborately layered handmade and hand painted paper and employing meticulous embroidery, the artist’s works emphasize form and vibrational color, with a dedication to a unique material approach. He explores geometric abstraction, cultural memory and the natural world, through the lens of his own lived experience.
Throughout his career, Aminlari has contemplated themes of displacement, in-betweenness, and the notion of home. These newest works continue these investigations, while referencing the artist’s own garden. Verdant greens, deep purples, and bright fuchsias abound in compositions that draw from the natural world and a palette evocative of seasonal shift and spring bloom. The exhibition’s title, while marking the literal edges of the artist’s own tended space, also speaks to the larger and timely issue of human-defined boundaries.
In the summer of 2021, Aminlari was invited by the acclaimed paper workshop Dieu Donné to create handmade paper from abaca pulp layered on top of a cotton base. He experimented with couching, which produces intentionally layered effects, resulting in dynamic compositional properties that expose color and texture, by way of thoughtful reactions to chance. Aminlari furthered his interest in papermaking while in residence at Penland School of Craft in early 2024. Embracing the material’s organic qualities, he has continued to develop a distinct approach, offsetting and manipulating layers of custom-dyed pulp. The results are sculptural and topographical, with variegated surfaces populated by contrasting colors, especially manifested at the paper’s bubbling edges.
Hand-embroidered into the paper with common sewing or deadstock 24-karat gold thread, Aminlari’s forms continue to mine the visual language of textiles and other patterned objects he experienced as a child, while also suggesting symbols for animals and plants. Resisting strict interpretation, his interstitial shapes move beyond any singular culture or context, instead emphasizing the fluid and subjective nature of personal memory and the physical world we inhabit.
Completing the exhibition, the artist includes two new stoneware objects, part of his recent concentration on ceramics, which has become integral to his ongoing investigation of form. These freestanding works incorporate compositions, colors and textures related to his threaded wall works, further emphasizing the sculptural and material concerns present throughout his practice.
At once intimate and expansive, Abdolreza’s works invite contemplation, bridging personal and collective histories, lived experience and cultural memory, and contemporary craft and social practice—ultimately erasing the borders between them.
