PRESENTATION: Y.Z. Kami-The Domes
Y.Z. Kami’s paintings, drawings, collages, and sculptures explore the tension between the physical and the spiritual, surface and depth. His large-scale portraits, based on his own photos, depict family, friends, and strangers in meditative poses—eyes open or closed, rendered in matte oil on linen with a soft sfumato effect. Echoing Byzantine frescoes and Fayum portraits, these works evoke the infinite through material presence. In his abstract pieces, Kami continues this dialogue using architectural forms, geometry, poetry, and dreamlike imagery.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Gagosian Archive
In his exhibition “The Domes,” Y.Z. Kami brings together two deeply resonant bodies of work: an expansive selection of his “Dome” paintings created from 2011 to today, and a trio of new paintings from his evolving “Messenger” series. This presentation also marks a poignant homecoming for Kami, whose early years in the United States were shaped by life in Northern California after his family emigrated from Tehran in 1973. Over the decades, Southern California has served as a meaningful backdrop for Kami’s artistic journey, including a solo exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art nearly ten years ago. At the heart of “The Domes” are Kami’s meditative interpretations of sacred architectural forms. His “Dome” paintings translate the structure and spirit of domes—those soaring feats of design found in temples, churches, and mosques—into mesmerizing compositions of tessellated shapes and luminous color. Circles of squares and rectangles, rendered in shades of white, gold, deep blue, and black, ripple outward in geometric harmony. In some, radiant, mosaic-like centers pull the viewer’s gaze inward, echoing the quiet awe of looking up into a sacred dome—those symbolic ceilings that seem to suspend the heavens above vast, light-filled spaces. Stripped of traditional perspective, these works function like mandalas: visual meditations that aspire toward the infinite. Kami aligns each color palette with the four elemental stages of alchemical transformation—earth, water, air, and fire—linking spiritual architecture to ancient metaphysical systems. The “Dome” paintings trace their lineage back to Kami’s 1996 “Untitled (Diptych),” a pair of large photographic prints juxtaposing Persian domes, first exhibited at MoMA’s Architecture as Metaphor in 1997. This early exploration of sacred space as visual vortex laid the groundwork for later works like “Rumi, The Book of Shams E Tabrizi (In Memory of Mahin Tajadod)” (2005), a sculptural tribute in soapstone to the great Persian poet Rumi, and the ongoing “Endless Prayer” series of collages and paintings begun that same year. Complementing the celestial stillness of the “Domes” are three evocative new works from Kami’s “Messenger” series, which he began in 2022. Inspired by a photograph he took while traveling in India, these paintings center around a lone, anonymous figure viewed from behind, caught mid-stride—as if journeying between worlds. Painted with a soft, ethereal touch reminiscent of Kami’s earlier portraiture, each figure is placed within an evocative landscape: one stands before a lush, forested expanse; another moves toward a gleaming, distant cityscape that rises like a dream or mirage. In these works, Kami offers a quiet meditation on solitude, movement, and spiritual searching. The “Messenger” paintings create a subtle dialogue between the natural and the built environment, between the timelessness of the inner self and the ephemeral pull of the modern world. Together with the “Dome” series, they form a contemplative space—one that invites viewers to look.
Photo: Y.Z. Kami, Blue Dome, 2025, Oil on linen, 63 × 72 inches (160 × 182.9 cm), © Y.Z. Kami, Photo: Owen Conway, Courtesy Gagosian
Info: Gagosian, 456 North Camden Drive, Beverly Hills, CA, USA, Duration: 28/6-8/8/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-17:30, https://gagosian.com/
