Amir Zaki (born 1974, Beaumont, California) is an American artist based in Southern California. He is best known for "hybridized" photographs using digital and analog technologies that explore the rhetoric of authenticity, vocabulary of documentary, and acts of looking and constructing images.Sholis, Brian. "Amir Zaki," Vitamin Ph: New Perspectives in Photography, Anthology, London: Phaidon Press, p. 328–329.Michno, Christopher. "Critic's Picks: Los Angeles," Art Ltd, January 2015. His work often focuses on the iconography and landscape of Southern California, simultaneously celebrating the banal and vernacular and subverting its related mythology.Cameron, Dan. California Landscape into Abstraction, Newport Beach, CA: Orange County Museum of Art, p. 54–55. Retrieved March 6, 2019.Tumlir, Jan. "Amir Zaki," in California Biennial 2006, Elizabeth Armstrong, Rita Gonzalez, and Karen Moss, Newport Beach, CA: Orange County Museum of Art, p.35–45, 168–171. Zaki has exhibited nationally and internationally,Dalian Modern Museum. The First 'Belt and Road' International Ocean City Cultural Photo Week of Dalian, China, Dalian, China: Dalian Modern Museum, p. 84–85. and been featured in shows at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Orange County Museum of Art (California Biennial, 2006), California Museum of Photography, and San Jose Museum of Art.University of California, Riverside. Amir Zaki, Faculty, Department of Art. Retrieved March 6, 2019. His work is held in the public collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art,Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Amir Zaki, Collections. Retrieved March 6, 2019. Hammer Museum, New Museum,New Museum. "New Additions to the Altoids Curiously Strong Collection", Exhibitions. Retrieved March 6, 2019. and Whitney Museum,Whitney Museum of American Art. Amir Zaki, Untitled (OH_04X), 2004, Collection. Retrieved March 6, 2019. among many,Coblentz, Cassandra. Forsaken Utopias: Photographs from the OCMA Permanent Collection, Catalogue, Santa Ana, CA: Orange County Museum of Art, p. 17–20. and appears in the anthologies Vitamin Ph (2006), Photography is Magic (by Charlotte Cotton, 2015)Cotton, Charlotte. Photography is Magic, Aperture, 2015, p. 240–3. Retrieved March 6, 2019. and Both Sides of Sunset: Photographing Los Angeles (2015).Brown, Jane and Marla Hamburg Kennedy (eds). Both Sides of Sunset: Photographing Los Angeles, Anthology, New York: Metropolis Books, 2015, p. 141, 192, 222, 276.
Zaki's art has been featured in Artforum,Hainley, Bruce. "Amir Zaki at Roberts and Tilton," Artforum, November 2001, p. 151. Flash Art,Campagnola, Sonia. "Focus on Los Angeles: Amir Zaki," Flash Art, January–February 2006. p. 75. Art in America,Dykstra, Jean. "Amir Zaki," Art in America, October 2010, p. 185. ARTnews,Berwick, Carly. "Happenstance," ARTnews, April 2006, p. 146. the Los Angeles Times,Pagel, David. "Look closer at nature's many layers," Los Angeles Times, April 9, 2017, Calendar Section F2. The New York Times,Schwendener, Martha. "Amir Zaki," The New York Times, October 26, 2007, Arts, p. B29. and The Seattle Times,Upchurch, Michael. "Artist's ‘hybrid photography' revels in essences, enigmas," The Seattle Times, November 11. 2016, W+, p. 23. among many publications. New York Times critic Martha Schwendener described his early images of domestic architecture as "graphic and abstract, with meaning hovering at the edge of the frame, they read like metonyms for Los Angeles itself."Schwendener, Martha. "Amir Zaki," Artforum, April 10, 2005. Zaki's monographs include: Building + Becoming (2022),Zaki, Amir and Jennifer Ashton, Walter Benn Michaels, Corrina Peipon. Building + Becoming, X Artists’ Books/DoppelHouse Press, 2022. Retrieved February 25, 2022.DoppelHouse Books. "Amir Zaki’s Building + Becoming Coming this Spring," February 24, 2021.Retrieved February 25, 2022. California Concrete: A Landscape of Skateparks, with essays by Tony Hawk and Peter Zellner (2019),Zaki, Amir. California Concrete: A Landscape of Skateparks, Essays by Tony Hawk and Peter Zellner, London/New York: Merrell Publishers, 2019. Eleven Minus One (2010),Zaki, Amir. Eleven Minus One, Monograph, Los Angeles: LAXART and Eighth Veil, 2010. and VLHV (2003).Zaki, Amir. VLHV (Valley Lake Hollywood Village), Monograph, Los Angeles: Roberts and Tilton, and James Harris Gallery, 2003. He is Professor of Photography and Digital Technology in the Art Department at University of California, Riverside.
Life and career Zaki was born in Beaumont, California in 1974 and attended the University of California Riverside (UCR), where he double-majored in art and philosophy (BA, 1996) and studied photography with John Divola and Uta Barth.Cai, Yuan Qing. "Amir Zaki: Sculpture on a Flat Image," Chinese Photography Association, October 17, 2018. He did graduate work with James Welling at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), earning an MFA in 1999.Hultrans, Andrew. "Surf and Turf," Artforum, Summer 1998, p. 134.Stallings, Tyler. Truthiness: Photography as Sculpture, Riverside, CA: California Museum of Photography, p. 41–42. Upon graduating, he actively exhibited locally (Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Santa Barbara Museum of Art and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions) and nationally (New Museum and Whitney Museum). Since 2000, he has had solo shows at the Mak Center at the Schindler House and the ACME, Roberts and Tilton, and Edward Cella galleries (Los Angeles), Perry Rubenstein Gallery (New York), and James Harris Gallery (Seattle), among others.Zellen, Jody. "Amir Zaki at the Mak Center and Roberts & Tilton," Artweek, April 2005, p. 22. In 2005, the architecture magazine Domus commissioned him to photograph the new Herzog and de Meuron extension of the Walker Art Center and published his work on its cover and in a special feature.Domus Magazine. "Herzog & de Meuron – The Walker Art Center," Cover and special feature photographs, May 2005, Tripartite cover and p. 26–45. In 2018, Zaki was one of ten international photographers invited by the Dalian Modern Museum in China to create work for the exhibit, "Eye of the World: Shots of Dalian," and was also featured in a survey exhibition there.
Zaki has taught in the Art Department of at UCR since 1999. In 2002, he was appointed Professor of Photography and Digital Technology.Tran, Lilian. "Art Professor Amir Zaki leaves a creative mark in China and on campus," UCR CHASS News, November 6, 2018. He is also a certified yoga instructor and teaches free yoga and tai chi courses at UCR. In 2011, he started Infinity Strap, a business based around two products for which he holds patents, a figure-eight-shaped yoga strap and a specially shaped yoga block.Infinity Strap. Our Story, Official website. Retrieved March 6, 2019.
Work Zaki emerged amid photography's transition to digital technologies; his "hybridized photographs"—made from multiple images, using both analog and digital technologies—build on recent conceptual and historical photographic traditions.Armstrong, Elizabeth. "California Above All," Art Review, May–June 2006, p. 80–8. Zaki captures ubiquitous, eclectic Southern California iconography, often in a flat, documentary style that maintains an initial sense of veracity, which he disrupts by limiting references of scale, perspective, spatial logic and context or making digital alterations.Armstrong, Elizabeth and Rita Gonzalez, Karen Moss (ed). California Biennial 2006, Newport Beach, CA: Orange County Museum of Art, p. 35–45.Patterson, Robert. "Artist Profile: Amir Zaki," Revolver, August 21, 2010. He often works in distinct but interrelated series that play off one another conceptually and formally to explore various dualities: photographic authenticity and digital manipulation, function and dysfunctionality, the real and imaginary, two-dimensional surface and three-dimensional form.Michno, Christopher. "Amir Zaki – ACME," Artillery Magazine, May/June 2017, p. 51. Reviewers frequently note that despite Zaki's conceptual focus, his work also conveys strong formalist and sensual concerns.Ollman, Leah. "Images of Beauty and Mystery," Los Angeles Times, January 19, 2015, Section E3.Graves, Jen. "California, Seattle, and Las Vegas," The Stranger, January 14–20, 2010, p. 23. He works in two primary veins: built landscape series and "natural" landscape series.
Built landscape series
Zaki's early "Photographs From" (1999) and "Various Recordings" (2001) series feature long-exposure images of depopulated Los Angeles night scenes whose rooftop vantage points call attention to the act of looking and suggest portent.Zellen, Jody. "Amir Zaki at Roberts and Tilton," Art Press, September 2000, p. 68.Donaldson, Laura. Caught, Beverly, MA: Montserrat College of Art, p. 3–4. Presented in tight, unconventional vertical formats that flatten and abstract the space, the images contain small, intensified bursts of color highlighting spare signs of life and mysterious, digitally excised absences. Critics described them as disconcerting,Hackett, Regina. "Amir Zaki," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, March 24, 2000, p. 22. anticipatory moments "like held breaths"Cooper, Jacqueline. "Amir Zaki at Roberts and Tilton," New Art Examiner, September 2000, p. 61–62. that conjured Edward Hopper and science fiction noir. Zaki's "Valley Lake Hollywood Village" works (2003) take banal suburban homes and unnaturally squeeze them into turret-, castle- or spire-like forms placed in believable surroundings to startling effect.Frank, Peter. "Amir Zaki," LA Weekly, January 31 – February 6, 2003, p. 117.Hackett, Regina. "Amir Zaki's photos of everyday scenes invite double takes," The Seattle Post-Examiner, January 10, 2003, p. 15.Miller, Jeffrey. "Age of Convenience: The Beauty of Monotony," The Stranger, January 16–22, 2003, p. 32. The later "A Question Marks the Spot" series (2007),Amir Zaki. "A Question Marks the Spot" series, Exhibitions and Bodies of Work. Retrieved March 6, 2019. engages semiology, with straight-on images of post-war strip mall architecture in which Zaki replaced identifying signage with a cryptic, invented iconography of symbols, squiggles, and emblems.Zellen, Jody. "Amir Zaki," artUS, Spring 2008, p. 31. Critic Martha Schwendener described them as "razor-sharp, formalist photographs that ripple with noirish undercurrents" and extend the Los Angeles street photography tradition associated with Ed Ruscha.