Kamrooz Aram Exhibits Widely in 2026, Challenging Modernist Grid Traditions

In early 2026, artist Kamrooz Aram has multiple exhibitions running concurrently. He presented work at Nature Morte in Mumbai during Mumbai Art Week, has a solo exhibition titled 'Infrequencies' at Alexander Gray Associates in Tribeca, Manhattan, and is featured prominently in the 2026 Whitney Biennial. Aram, who was born in Iran and holds an MFA from Columbia University, is recognized for his critical engagement with the grid as an artistic structure. His practice examines the relationship between Western modernist abstraction and non-Western decorative traditions, particularly those from Western Asia such as pottery and tilework. Through paintings and mixed-media works, he challenges the binary opposition often drawn between these visual languages, arguing that such divisions serve to reinforce Western modernism's self-referentiality. His 2025 piece 'Descendants (Luster on Blue Glaze)' at the Whitney Biennial explicitly critiques art historical narratives by juxtaposing a photographic image of a vase within grids that reference both Piet Mondrian and Persian decorative color. Another 2026 work, 'Requiem for Perpetual Defeat,' incorporates actual ceramic vessels within a constructed shadowbox. The exhibition at Alexander Gray Associates, on view until April 11, 2026, showcases a series of seven paintings from 2020 to 2026 that explore a more gestural approach, subverting the rigid grid structure. The Whitney Biennial, curated by Marcela Guerrero and Drew Sawyer with Beatriz Cifuentes and Carina Martinez, continues through August 23, 2026. Aram's work provocatively questions the historical suppression and appropriation of decorative arts within the canon of modernist abstraction.