Amir Zaki: No Dust to Settle
Past exhibition
Overview
Amir Zaki, "San Juan Capistrano Library, #1", 2025, Framed archival photograph, 29 ¾ x 37 inches
Diane Rosenstein is pleased to announce No Dust to Settle, a solo exhibition of new photographs by artist Amir Zaki (USA, b. 1974). This is Zaki’s third solo exhibition with our gallery, and it will inaugurate our new space in Hollywood.
“The conceptual territory here connects closely to questions of literacy, public space, cultural memory, and the indexical nature of the photographic medium.”
Zaki has selected fifteen black and white photographs from this recent body of work: an alternative archive of the postwar architectural history of modernist libraries in Southern California. For the past twenty-seven years, Amir Zaki has developed a photographic language which seeks to elevate the formal qualities of California’s architecture and landscape. Here, he has photographed the interiors and exteriors of post–WWII public libraries in Orange County, including buildings by Richard Neutra and William Pereira, while again removing all legible text, a difficult technical and conceptual constraint when dealing with a space whose purpose is to house language. These libraries have shifted dramatically in meaning and function within the artist’s lifetime, and the resulting images explore that evolution through reflection, architecture, and absence.
Amir Zaki (USA, b. 1974) makes photographs of California landscapes and architecture, and he re-envisions the world before him, creating a tension between the functional and the dysfunctional. “My own work has focused mainly on both the built and natural landscape of California. I am among a generation of photographers who truly embraced digital technology as a way to make photographs that could not be made using only traditional means.”
Born and raised in Beaumont, California, Zaki received his BA from UC Riverside (1996) and MFA from UCLA (1999). He has received solo exhibitions with Diane Rosenstein Gallery; and from the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, ACME, and Edward Cella Gallery, all in Los Angeles; de Boer in Antwerp; and James Harris Gallery in Dallas and Seattle. Amir Zaki’s photographs were included in The New City: Sub/urbia in Recent Photography at the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY (2006); Golden Hour: California Photography from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Vincent Price Art Museum (2022), Something About A Tree (curated by Linda Yablonsky), Flag Art Foundation, NY (2013); and the 2006 California Biennial, Orange County Museum of Art, in Newport Beach, CA. His work is in the permanent collection of The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Orange County Museum of Art, and the Henry Art Gallery at University of Washington in Seattle; among others. He is a full professor of art at UC Riverside. Amir Zaki lives and works in Huntington Beach.
“The conceptual territory here connects closely to questions of literacy, public space, cultural memory, and the indexical nature of the photographic medium.”
Zaki has selected fifteen black and white photographs from this recent body of work: an alternative archive of the postwar architectural history of modernist libraries in Southern California. For the past twenty-seven years, Amir Zaki has developed a photographic language which seeks to elevate the formal qualities of California’s architecture and landscape. Here, he has photographed the interiors and exteriors of post–WWII public libraries in Orange County, including buildings by Richard Neutra and William Pereira, while again removing all legible text, a difficult technical and conceptual constraint when dealing with a space whose purpose is to house language. These libraries have shifted dramatically in meaning and function within the artist’s lifetime, and the resulting images explore that evolution through reflection, architecture, and absence.
Amir Zaki (USA, b. 1974) makes photographs of California landscapes and architecture, and he re-envisions the world before him, creating a tension between the functional and the dysfunctional. “My own work has focused mainly on both the built and natural landscape of California. I am among a generation of photographers who truly embraced digital technology as a way to make photographs that could not be made using only traditional means.”
Born and raised in Beaumont, California, Zaki received his BA from UC Riverside (1996) and MFA from UCLA (1999). He has received solo exhibitions with Diane Rosenstein Gallery; and from the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, ACME, and Edward Cella Gallery, all in Los Angeles; de Boer in Antwerp; and James Harris Gallery in Dallas and Seattle. Amir Zaki’s photographs were included in The New City: Sub/urbia in Recent Photography at the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY (2006); Golden Hour: California Photography from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Vincent Price Art Museum (2022), Something About A Tree (curated by Linda Yablonsky), Flag Art Foundation, NY (2013); and the 2006 California Biennial, Orange County Museum of Art, in Newport Beach, CA. His work is in the permanent collection of The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Orange County Museum of Art, and the Henry Art Gallery at University of Washington in Seattle; among others. He is a full professor of art at UC Riverside. Amir Zaki lives and works in Huntington Beach.
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