Panni Malekzadeh‘s beautiful portraits of contemporary women take us back to that magical time in our life when we realized we were completely in the midst of womanhood, yet still felt young and girly at heart. For some reason, taking on the world with limited experience, but an eagerness and willingness to try anything, felt empowering and thrilling. Less an age that we retrieve memories from, and more a state of mind, Malekzadeh’s Love Me Till It Hurts seems to have been created under this guise as well.
The young painter, who received her MFA from New York Academy Of Art in 2009, depicts Persian women coming of age in this show. Filled with beautiful, beguiling women, who seemed to have time traveled from their 18th century lives to sit for their portraits, dressed in their finest garb and adorned with ponies, unicorns, dollhouses, whips, lingerie, and bondage.
Realistically rendered with acute lighting, the style is slightly out of focus, adding to the sense of fantasy and illusion in this work. Panni recalls a fascination with her father’s Playboy magazines and their particular stylization of women which held tightly to her memory and led to her determination of uninhibited expression.
The clothing worn in these portraits are exact replications of period garb from LA’s Palace Costumes.
Additionally, Panni presents a series of pink dollhouses in an antique wallpapered, “bedroom” setting alongside the paintings.
https://www.pannimalek.com/
On view now at Freight + Volume
530 W 24th St. NYC 212 691 7700
